three cents: sprung

[three cents = money + love + creative work, and i send it to you about once a month]

1. a thing about money
Remember when I sent half of my first book advance installment to the IRS? Well, I'm getting most of it back. I'm happy to report this strategy worked for essayist Meaghan O'Connell, too. This is the first time I've gotten a tax refund in about... ever? I'm so thrilled I don't much mind giving the IRS a free loan. So, what am I going to do with all my riches? Put it towards next year's taxes, of course.


2. a thing about work
At the end of the month, I'm going to LA for the AWP conference (that's "Association of Writers & Writing Programs," and no, I don't know where they're hiding that extra "W"). Truthfully, I sort of hate conferences (introvert!) and I'm also sort of recovering from a month-long bout with pneumonia, so I can't promise late nights of schmoozing and drinking. I can, however, promise to be at my own panel, and you should be too: The Odd Couple: Literature and Commerce. View my list of recommended panels here. 

3. a thing about love
Thomas Page McBee's stunning essay "Why Men Fight" is chock full o' love—love of men, love between men, love of oneself. The relationship between McBee and his trainer, and the way his trainer sees him much more clearly than McBee thinks he does, is especially lovely. Heartwarming, even. I'm not sure this essay ultimately answered any questions for me, a non-man, about men + violence, but perhaps that's sort of the point.

linkage:

How on earth can we get young professional women to stay at their jobs? Really, it's just the biggest mystery. I mean, how!?!

So, is the publishing industry really just "a bunch of white men gathering in the catacombs beneath the Harvard Club and sipping the blood of suffragettes out of the skull of Jane Austen, making a pact not to publish anyone who isn't white and male"? A diverse sampling of publishing folks speak for themselves about their jobs.

Speaking of white people, in "The Last Lifestyle Magazine," Kyle Chayka looks into the origins and influence of Kinfolk (which I really hope is not the last lifestyle magazine, because ugh).

"Think about the last time you read a novel in which someone went to cash a benefit check or paid for food in food stamps, or got off a double-shift at a retail store and were having their home or car repossessed. These are the conditions in which much of this country lives and it is a dereliction of capability (not duty) to ignore it in literature."  An interview with John Freeman, editor of Freeman's / novelist / former editor of Granta / man about town.

Breaking: Playwright Makes Money by Writing Plays. 

Now that I'm working at Zoetrope: All-Story, I'm even more attuned to the world of adaptation. (All-Story was founded in part because of Francis Coppola's belief that short stories make the best films). And Stephen King knows from adaptations. 

At All-Story, we have a staff of two. Yes, two people. So I especially enjoyed this piece by Maria Bustillos on New Directions Press, and why big is not always better.

One of the many awesome writers in the Scratch anthology is Sarah Smarsh, a journalist and memoirist whose work largely focuses on class in America. If you haven't yet heard of Sarah, you soon will. Check her out in Texas Monthly, writing about her dad's construction work and the disappearing line between the working class and the working poor.

Speaking of downward mobility, if you liked my reconsideration of Little Women's least beloved sister, you might enjoy Sadie Stein's reconsideration of Little Women's least desirable love interest: Getting to Know Professor Behr. Too far, Sadie, too far. 

COMING SOON: 

The new Who Pays Writers? site is almost done! It is going to be stunningly beautiful and functional. For your eyes only, here's a preview of our new avatar, which will soon replace the low-res picture of a blingy computer mouse that I stole off Google images back in 2012: