the transformative power of personal projects (video)

Minutiae

• Memoirist Sue William Silverman: "It is voice, then, in all its manifestations, that examines multiple and mysterious facets of a persona: the real 'you' deepened into a character." More @ creativenonfiction.org

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• “In the past thirteen years since my novel has been published, I have talked to thousands of women who have been sexually abused… I’m not a social worker but an artist. I have took, and will continue to take, the stories of women I have listened to and turn them into fiction.” More at UWM.

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• "[Ralph]Ellison lived in the midst of his own success and sat down to write with, one imagines, something like the weight of the literary world on his shoulders." More @ Salt Lake Tribune.

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• Ras @ 317am.net offers some thoughts on the idea of "idea" and theme in fiction. Parts One & Two.

  "Most of us do think of character, plot, point of view, voice, and setting before we think of ideas when beginning to work on a story. [...] But there is something about ideas that seems alien to the unspoken assumptions of realism that underlie the mainstream of contemporary fiction."

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• Elif Bautman's The Possessed and David Shields' Reality Hunger will be consumed and regurgitated into lit critic goodness here in March.  

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• My reviews of a Wu-Tang mash-up and Canadian emcee Chokeules courtesy of Okayplayer. Synopsis: keep your billfolds closed.

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• Walter Mosley. Nikki Giovanni. Steve Harvey. Which one wouldn't normally win a lit award of any kind? 2010 NAACP Image Award winners @ NYT.

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