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Darryl “DMC” McDaniels, best known for his role in the legendary rap group Run-DMC, speaks about growing up in Hollis, Queens and what led him to depression. McDaniels's memoir, Ten Ways Not to Commit Suicide (Amistad, 2016), details his struggles with fame and addiction, and his recovery.
The Irukandji jellyfish, mostly found off the coast of Australia, are the most poisonous box jellyfish, and at one cubic centimeter, also the smallest. Another distinguishing feature is its sting, which produces what scientists call a “feeling of impending doom,” partially caused by venom triggering hormones connected to anxiety. Write a personal essay about a time in your past in which you felt intensely anxious about a situation, and were unfailingly convinced of a negative outcome. What were the circumstances and external factors that led you to this perspective? Did you overcome your fears and emerge from the other side with a new outlook?
"Literature played a profound role in turning my life around, but it was also journaling as well, like being able to really write and ask myself those tough questions..." Shaka Senghor, author of the memoir, Writing My Wrongs: Life, Death, and Redemption in an American Prison (Drop a Gem Publishing, 2013), speaks with Jeffrey Brown about how reading and writing helped him to examine his life, and the need for American citizens to understand the prison system.
"We may use words to break that prison...that is why I wrote that book, and that is why I wrote the others." Elie Wiesel explains his reasons for writing Night (Hill & Wang, 1960), the first in a trilogy of books about his experiences during the Holocaust, and the challenges in getting it published. Wiesel passed away on July 2 at the age of eighty-seven.
"This is what we must do—not to sleep well when people suffer anywhere in the world." Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel speaks about the power of law to change people's lives while accepting the 2012 William O. Douglas Award.
Every summer there’s that one song—or maybe two—that you just can’t escape at barbecues, pool hangouts, beach bonfires, on car radios, and in air-conditioned malls. Eventually you find your memories of that summer are inseparable from the ubiquitous song. Write an essay about a recent summer and the song that played throughout the season that stuck with you. You might decide to take a closer look at the lyrics of the song, and recount specific events and memories to help you process their harmonious connection.
Tracy K. Smith on urgency and persona in poetry; emotional stoicism in Wilder’s Little House series; poets and eating disorders; and other news.
"The best way to find an agent is a referral." For an event at Harvard University, Betsy Lerner, a partner with the literary agency Dunow, Carlson & Lerner, offers essential advice to writers on how to find an agent and get published. "Rock, Paper, Scissors" by Lerner, an essay on being an agent, writer, and editor, is in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
Amazon rolls out new Kindle navigation feature; a toast to the Toast; the necessity of procrastination; and other news.
"Writing memoir, if it's done right I think, is like knocking yourself out with your own fist." For a reading at the 92nd Street Y moderated by Kathryn Schulz, Mary Karr, author of The Art of Memoir (Harper, 2015), joins Helen Macdonald, author of H Is for Hawk (Grove Press, 2015), to speak about their love of memoir and poetry.
