by Jamie Chavez | May 5, 2016 | The Book Biz
This is the unpredictable world of twenty-first–century publishing—a paradoxical place in which more and more Americans each year possess a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in creative writing, yet the percentage of American non–book readers has tripled since 1978. According...
by Jamie Chavez | Apr 21, 2016 | Authors & Other Writers, The Writing Craft
Flannery O’Connor wrote in “The Nature and Aim of Fiction” that most people who write “are more interested in being a writer than in writing. They are interested in seeing their names at the top of something printed, it matters not what.” This, I realized once I’d...
by Jamie Chavez | Apr 7, 2016 | Authors & Other Writers, Books You Might Like
During a recent visit to the Florida island where our parents live, my brother and I had dinner with them at a fancy restaurant. As we bent our heads over our menus—all of us, that is, except my father, who can’t see—I realized that our identically rapt expressions...
by Jamie Chavez | Mar 26, 2016 | Words & Language
I have said this more than once: I learned a lot from reading books. It led directly to my current vocation, for one thing. But before that, for example, it led to my acquisition of an excellent vocabulary and, I believe, my ability to put that vocabulary to work in a...
by Jamie Chavez | Feb 18, 2016 | Your Editor Says …
You will continually be taking chances. There will be readers who want you to kill that ape with the oboe, get the diamonds out of the roast beef, cut ‘myrmecoid’ and ‘sharded.’ (“Don’t say ‘myrmecoid,’ say what it means: ‘antlike.’” I’m not interested in...
