On Freedom of Speech

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It seems to me there are no shades of gray here. Suppressing a book because you disagree with its content is always a challenge to freedom of speech. And the writers who disputed this — whether Roald Dahl or John le Carré — had different agendas. Sometimes writers are contrarians just for the sake of being contrarians or because they are simply jealous of the attention another writer is getting. The fact remains that Rushdie, by writing, did not cause injuries and deaths. The fatwa did. Life Intimidates Art

Quote of the Week

The More Things Change

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[BS: Yesterday, we talked about genre and reaching readers. Today, we have one of the authors discussed in the post. Please welcome Nicola Griffith, author of Always as she talks about the challenges — and then some — of living with a single character over the course of many books. Needless to say, this is a book you have to read.] I’ve been writing about Aud (rhymes with cloud) Torvingen for ten years. In The Blue Place she was someone I would have run from, a woman *this* close to being a sociopath. In Stay she was grieving, tentative and

Books/Mags/Blogs

Why Did The Reader Cross The Aisle?

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For the past week, the notion of genre and images has consumed me. Okay, also wondering what’s for lunch, but the genre question has been more than a little all-encompassing. In addition to the fantastic article written by Pam Jenoff for BS last week, back channel discussion about Nicola Griffith’s Always has been happening (Gwenda Bond, the one and only, has posted the first installment of said discussion here). The craziness might lead to another problem: readers who make their own books The question roiling in the scary place that is my mind is whether or not strict genre categorization

The Future of Publishing
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