I Would Die 4 U

Talking Writing is talking PRINT. Is it dead? I took a stab at the question. Here’s the beginning of my article:

‘Print and the Revolution’

In 1984, Prince and the Revolution released the album Purple Rain. One of its mega-hits—“I Would Die 4 U”—reads today like an early version of a text message. Prescient Prince also called on us to “party like it’s 1999,” evoking our millennial obsession with apocalypse.

Read the rest here.

And a fellow shy, Midwestern book lover writes a love letter to a Cincinnati library:

‘Love Letter to the Mercantile’

I began my writing life as a girl in love with books.

At twenty, I was awed when I first walked into the Mercantile Library in downtown Cincinnati to attend a public reading. The Mercantile, one of the few remaining membership libraries in the country—the Boston Athenæum is another—has hosted such megastars as Emerson and Melville. The space simply feels literary. The musk of Great Men lingers, like particles trapped in the spines of old books.

The fellow shy, Midwestern girl is Sarah Domet, author of 90 Days to Your Novel, which you should buy and use as your guide to planning and writing the novel you’ve been planning to plan and write. Read the rest of her love letter here.