Stephen Delaney

“The whole language of writing for me is finding out what you don’t want to know, what you don’t want to find out. But something forces you to anyway.”

— James Baldwin

#writing #fiction

Thomas Pynchon Has Been Warning Us About American Fascism the Whole Time Paul Thomas Anderson’s adaptations of Thomas Pynchon’s novels—first Inherent Vice in 2014, and now One Battle After Another in 2025—may be tipping the scales, with more first-time Pynchon readers f…

In @literaryhub.bsky.social, @devintoshea.bsky.social describes how movies are popularizing the classic #Pynchon theme: "The war between the powerful and the powerless."
lithub.com/thomas-pynch...

The Flag of Ahab | Charles Baxter On the literature and politics of charisma.

Read Charles Baxter on the literature and politics of charisma. www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/f...

“Always, where there is darkness, there must be a hint of light, and where there is brightness, some shadow play. Without this tonal range of mood orchestration, tension and artistic effect are lost.”

— Aimee Parkison

#writing #fiction

Betwixt or Bewitched? Rethinking the “Middlebrow” with Dino Buzzati Reframed as a “bewitched middlebrow,” Buzzati’s fiction re-enters literary history not as a comforting escape, but as a sharp tool for existential inquiry.

In a new review, Caterina Domeneghini studies a surge in translation to English of the work of Dino Buzzati. “This new translation project doesn’t just revive Buzzati,” she argues, “it reframes him.”

the weight of stillness, the power of white space Photo by Filip Kominik on Unsplash

My free September newsletter...

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This probably can't be bottled, but some books definitely lower blood pressure and help one breathe.

#booksky

Exploring Octavia Butler’s Beginnings as a Sci-Fi Trailblazer It was Octavia Margaret who gave her daughter the spark to even consider a writing career. She saw her quiet, bookish ten-year-old daughter writing, saw the delight on her face as she created, and …

“She became fascinated with how human beings—especially those who didn’t have much power—could empower themselves and others and change the world.” What Octavia Butler’s early writings reveal about her trajectory as a literary icon.

“We sleep in language, if language doesn’t come to wake us with its strangeness.”

— Robert Kelly

#reading #writing

“I hate judgments that only crush and don’t transform.”

— Elias Canetti

#booksky

How to respond to disgruntled readers.

Where to Submit Presses | Chapbooks | Journals + Anthologies | Fellowships + Other Opportunities Last updated July 3, 2025 If you are an editor or publisher and would like your journal, press, or literary organiza…

Heavy Feather Review's Where to Submit resource (updated for July 2025) is invaluable and full of presses, journals, and sites open for submissions.

heavyfeatherreview.org/calls/

“Habitualization devours objects, clothes, furniture, one’s wife, and the fear of war … Art exists to help us recover the sensation of life; it exists to make us feel things, to make the stone stony.”

― Victor Shklovsky

#writing #art

“One of the strangest things about writing well is that it requires two different zones in the brain - rigor and recklessness - simultaneously.”
- Carole Maso

CANONGATE TO PUBLISH URSULA K. LE GUIN’S SELECTED WRITING ON LITERATURE CANONGATE TO PUBLISH URSULA K. LE GUIN’S SELECTED WRITING ON LITERATURE

Thrilled to announce Canongate will be publishing
WORDS ARE MY MATTER by Pulitzer Prize winner by Ursula K. Le Guin. A manual investigating the depth, breadth and importance of contemporary fiction.

canongate.co.uk/news/canonga...

Lydia Davis's INTO THE WEEDS (on how and why she writes) is due out September 16!

#booksky #writing

I like to keep an open book by my sink every morning. (Poetry and flash fiction work best.) It puts me in a better mood and keeps the world at bay.

#booksky

Deb Olin Unferth's "Likeable." Each time I read it it surprises me.

muumuuhouse.com/dou.fiction2...

Sorry I'm slow. Happy Birthday! 😀

“The mysterious does not spell itself out in capital letters, as many writers believe, but is always between, an interstice.”

— Julio Cortázar

#writing #fiction

Kazuo Ishiguro Reflects on Never Let Me Go, 20 Years Later While I’d been busy writing my fourth and fifth novels, my study had mysteriously transformed itself around me into a kind of miniature indoor jungle. Everywhere were dusty mountains of scribbled-o…

After 20 years, Kazuo Ishiguro reflects on the decades-long process behind Never Let Me Go.

“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream.”

—Shirley Jackson

It's interesting when a writer's voice is so strong that the question is less "What will happen next?" than "Where will this writer's mind take me?"

#booksky

At the Point of the Sword, Magic | Los Angeles Review of Books Sarah McEachern reviews Clarice Lispector’s “Covert Joy: Selected Stories.”

"For all the challenges her work poses, Lispector is a very accessible writer: her prose is as welcoming, embracing, inviting as it is ethereal, sly, strange." Sarah McEachern reviews Clarice Lispector's "Covert Joy: Selected Stories." lareviewofbooks.org/article/at-t...

“So long as I have questions to which there are no answers, I shall go on writing.”

― Clarice Lispector

#writers #writing

The Timeless Magic of Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities at 50 Chesterland, Ohio, 1979 I’m six years old and watching my two older brothers roll dice on the orange linoleum tiles in the basement. If I move a muscle, I’ve been warned—if I speak so much as a sin…

“The cities are stars, the sections constellations, the book a galaxy, and Calvino’s structure allows a reader to study each star and admire its idiosyncrasies.” Anthony Doerr reflects on Invisible Cities at 50.

“Bring together things that have as yet never been brought together and did not seem predisposed to be so.”

-- Robert Bresson

This cheered me up today (from CRONOPIOS AND FAMAS by Julio Cortazar).

#booksky #fiction

The Polymath of Pittsburgh Garielle Lutz is one of America’s great writers. Why has her literary genius gone unnoticed?

Garielle Lutz (author of Future Tense books, Partial List of People to Bleach and Assisted Living) is featured in The Nation. An amazing and moving profile.

Thanks so much!