A writer pal called recently to grumble about his agent-and, formerly, mine. He's a National Book Award winner a few years back, and together we endured a worst-case scenario: a small but well established agency changes leadership, and goes bankrupt at first slowly and then all at once. Mismanagement, late...

Largely missing from the Voter ID debate is the "what-comes-after" for the victors, that is, the Republican Party. Assuming that nearly all of the multi-state Vote ID amendments will pass, it shouldn't take a fiction writer to imagine a bitter harvest.

The first problem for the Republicans is one...

In 2005, Farrar, Straus & Giroux published my coming-of-age novel Full Service. Set in small town Midwest in 1965, it's the summer when everything changes (most of have such a time) for 16-year-old Paul Sutton. Fresh off the farm, and from a conservative and church-going family, he takes a job...

The famous Dr. Seuss book by similar title is most certainly an allegory of authors and book clubs. When we publish a new book we're certainly "off and away" on an adventure, and the places we'll go, from book store signings to peoples' overcrowded living rooms, are wonderful to downright...

As we pass the two-year anniversary of J.D. Salinger's death, why is it that no one remarks on the obvious? In his life and in his fiction, Salinger had a predilection for young girls and women that, at least from a 21st century lens, does not seem all that healthy....

The recently concluded National Book Awards always stirs up serious book lovers: this author was undeserving, that author a charity case, another far too young for such a prize. But this year, from an unfortunate error in the announcement of the Youth Literature finalists, the National Book Foundation (NBF) has...

1. Just because you speak English does not mean you can write English. Your boss is proof of that.

2. Someone has already written your novel, and better than you ever could. Certainly you've visited a bookstore, picked up a new release novel the plot summary of which filled you...

Scene: Tidy home office full of books and manuscripts. A baseball bat leans against the desk of middle-aged male WRITER. He is motionless, hands in lap, as he stares at blank computer screen. He appears frozen. Standing to his left, dressed darkly in jeans with shirt tails fashionably out, is...

Bruce Springsteen does not need our help, but he deserves our attention. His new album The Promise returns to his Darkness at the Edge of Town sessions, where we hear and see (there's an accompanying DVD) the agony and exhilaration of songwriting. The Boss was young then, and struggling to...

If the birth of Jesus was the original Christmas story, the idea of Christmas is also a rich source of secular literature. Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol comes first to mind. After Scrooge awakens from his bad dreams, his first question is: "What day is it, boy?" The answer of...

These words are God's punishment for literary success. They come from aspiring writers of infinite variety: former students, a friend of a friend, a reader who "has bought all your books," an old high school teacher, a neighbor in ill health, one's own children. Through emails, letters, phone calls and...

I learned some things while writing my memoir The Last Hunter: An American Family Album. For me, a fiction writer, the memoir was new territory, a literary form I had always lumped in with the autobiography. But clearly they were different. If an autobiography is the true and full story...

Not long ago my small northern city of Bemidji, Minnesota, had to deal with a book "challenge" at the local high school. The novel in question was Kent Haruf's Plain Song. One school board member with a right wing religious agenda pressed to have the book removed. The high school...

Neil Gaiman recently caused a fuss in Minnesota by accepting $45,000 for a guest appearance at a library. The $45K was the majority of the money set aside by a state library organization for several author appearances. "Minnesota Nice" quickly went away as Gaiman was tarred with several brushes, including...

I recently had lunch with two writer friends, and the topic turned to self-publication. A lively disagreement arose. The conversation seemed like it would be useful to writers thinking about publishing a book on their own, so I've reconstructed it here.

Marsh Muirhead, an essayist, poet, short story writer and...

What do books and professional wrestling have in common? A fair amount, it turns out. I just returned from "Wrestlemania" in Phoenix, which included a big reading smack-down for kids. World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) has several youth outreach programs including its international Reading Challenge-for which I was the judge. No,...

Everybody knows that boys read less than girls, but the current trends border on a national emergency. If you're an involved parent, or a teacher or editor or writer who works with boys, you already know what a brand new report by the Center On Education Policy (CEP, on 3/17/10)...