Before me, separated by 600 miles and a glitching video call, is Brandon Taylor. Behind him is his library of books, ensconced on his bookshelves, in a stack on his coffee table, enjoying the late-morning sun pouring in from the windows along their spines. Our conversation has been littered with references to Alexander Chee, Samanta Schweblin, Lauren Groff, and Karl Ove Knausgaard, among others. It takes no time at all for me to know this is a person who loves the written word in its various forms-from the classics to fan-fiction, literary fiction to romance novels. "Beverly Jenkins," he says, "so amazing. What an icon."
We've just been discussing the necessity of kindness one must offer oneself when you're no longer writing in the dark but writing in the public. It's a lesson he learned after the meteoric success of his first novel, Real Life. Published weeks before mass shutdowns in the early months of 2020, he assumed the book would be received quietly. "It's about a scientist in the Midwest; nobody really cares about that," he says. And yet, his modest expectations for his work were to be proved wrong, with the book receiving universal acclaim and reviews in The New Yorker online, Time magazine, The Washington Post, and The New York Times. It was unexpected, at times a dream come true and at other times a discombobulating unreality. And just as all seemed to be settling down, it was announced that Taylor was one of the six authors shortlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize. Suddenly, he found himself on British radio several times a week and attending countless Booker Prize events.
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة May - June 2023 من Writer’s Digest.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك ? تسجيل الدخول
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة May - June 2023 من Writer’s Digest.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
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Climate change is one of those topics that can throw novelists—and everyone else—into a fearful and cowering silence. When the earth is losing its familiar shapes and consolations, changing drastically and in unpredictable ways beneath our feet, how can we summon our creative resources to engage in the imaginative world-building required to write a novel that takes on these threats in compelling ways? And how to avoid writing fiction that addresses irreversible climate change without letting our prose get too preachy, overly prescriptive, saturated with despair?
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Unveil the hidden beauty in the facts and transform your nonfiction with the power of wonder.
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Agent Roundup
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