Category: Books

Booktok: A Community of Readers Rekindling My Love For Literature

1/1/2025

by BriAnna Sankey

When you read a good book, one that leaves you absolutely stunned--all you want to do is share it with someone! Preferably someone who has already read it, and understands your emotion behind the most specific scenes. Most times though, we find ourselves calling up a friend and forcing them to stay on the phone for an hour as we explain the whole plot of the book, and continue to give a thirty minute analysis breaking down the book in its entirety. Now I don’t know about you, but my friends would probably hang up after 10 minutes of word vomit because they aren’t readers. Since I’ve joined BookTok, I’ve seen how it brings readers together in a world where they can share their excitement over popular books and new, emerging titles. This sense of community is influential to the public because everyone wants to be “in” on the conversation. FOMO is no joke.

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Don't Stop Writing Fanfiction

12/1/2024

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by Bethaney Randazzo

“Stop writing fanfiction, and go get published.”

I often wonder where I would be if a twenty-three-year-old me had listened to that creative writing professor. Would I currently be in a masters in writing program, while teaching first-year college writing, on my way to transforming some of nearly eighty stories I’ve written over the decade since that comment was made into publishable works? Probably not.

via Canva

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Hey Hollywood, Publishing Is Actually Harder Than You Think

9/1/2024

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by Chloe Joy

Photo by JESHOOTS.COM on Unsplash

One of my guilty pleasures is bad romance movies. Bonus points if they are Christmas-themed or feature a person from a big city forced to travel to a small town and fall in love with a local. If both tropes are used? Immediately my favorite movie of the year. I love them so much because they’re not meant to be taken seriously nor reflect our real lives, so I often let my suspension of disbelief hang. The main leads say “I love you” after knowing each other for a few days? Sure! One big speech at the end can wash away the trauma one character brought upon another? I’m eating it up!

However, nothing gets under my skin more than the inaccurate portrayals of the publishing industry in these movies. Many romance movies have a B plot that focuses around the publishing industry (because publishing and struggling writers are just so sexy), and they almost always end with a fairy tale dream success story. I’m tired of this dominant, false narrative prevailing through the media, making publishing look easy, because if you’re a writer or aspiring editor like me, you know it’s anything but easy.

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In Defense of Short Stories

7/1/2024

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by Courtney R. Hall

A cover page with text in large, capitalized font that reads The Oxford Book of English Short Stories.

Photo by Hyoung-Won Park on Flickr

As a lifelong reader, avid writer, and recent graduate student pursuing a MA in Writing degree ('24), I have a confession to make: I cannot recall reading a short story for my own pleasure prior to attending graduate school. I, of course, had to study short stories throughout primary and high school, but they always seemed to be one-off stories in a textbook rather than part of a cohesive and meticulously curated collection. Craving an escape, my younger self epitomized the stereotypical book-obsessed-child, and this yearning has profoundly shaped my literary journey. It predominantly drew me toward novels and longer works of fiction and nonfiction—a literary habit I didn’t know I possessed until recently.

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The Myth of "Literary Fiction"

4/1/2024

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by Allison Padron

For some, the words "literary fiction" brings up images of tweed jackets, learned academics, dinner conversations over wine, and personal libraries filled with only the finest of literature. The "literary" label is usually applied by critics to novels considered so intellectual, so linguistically beautiful, and so meaningful that they apparently need to be separated out from the mass-market, "mindless" genre novels. The debate about the distinctions between genre fiction and literary fiction still rages (as it likely will for many more years), with some classifying literary fiction as an entirely different genre, others as a continuum with genre fiction, and still others saying the "literary" quality is something that a novel of any genre can possess. From everything I’ve read on the subject, though, no one seems to have come up with a clear definition of literary fiction (other than "not genre fiction"), which begs the question: why call anything literary fiction at all?

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Booktok: A Community of Readers Rekindling My Love For Literature

Don't Stop Writing Fanfiction

Hey Hollywood, Publishing Is Actually Harder Than You Think

In Defense of Short Stories

The Myth of "Literary Fiction"

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