Trailing clouds of glitter from a surprise Broadway triumph in Kenneth Lonergan’s serio-comedy This Is Our Youth, Rookie magazine founder Tavi Gevinson has expanded her extensive resume to include publishing maven. In addition to compiling the fourth Rookie Yearbook, due out this fall, Gevinson just made her debut as a literary editor. In the July/August issue of Poetry, the 103-year-old magazine that introduced American readers to the likes of Ezra Pound, Langston Hughes, and Edna St. Vincent Millay,…
When it comes to literary daydreaming, I’m not one for those imaginary dinner parties, with artisanally curated assemblages of Great Authors of All Time swapping deft bon mots between courses. Mostly, I’m sure, I’d end up worrying about Emily Dickinson’s food allergies and regretting having brought Nathanael West and Jacqueline Susann into the same room (hey, you choose your Great Authors, I’ll choose mine). Also, I don’t have a lot of chairs. I’m a copy…
What do you like, he said in the dark after the first time and they said everything you do, I like everything you do. And I’m here, I’m right here, believe that. And what do you like, they said in the dark time after time, and he said, everything, really, and they said no, tell me something, what do you like, a fantasy or something, and he said I have a rape fantasy, and they…
1. Just let go of the wheel and keep your foot on the gas, I heard myself think it, simple as an item on the To Do. I had just left my father’s house, and I was speeding towards an intersection when the lights turned—it was like I saw it from above, the cars screaming towards each other in a x of red and white—but I felt no fear of crashing. No itch either. I…
Any woman who goes back to school at the age of 68 for a degree that seems to be, on the face of it, entirely worthless is necessarily living by faith. When I returned to Columbia University’s School of the Arts to secure an M.F.A. in creative nonfiction, I know I sure was. Trusting that the universe would provide, that the usual impediments would simply melt away, I, the faithful one, plunged in, seeking a way…
This may well be where my nervous breakdown will come: here, in this IKEA. Today I am a fake writer writing in a fake office at a real desk, model name KLIMPEN/LALLE. Its main characteristics are whiteness and modesty. Its chair is rather uncomfortable, but IKEA isn’t paying me to be here, so I don’t have to be anything but honest. The Amtrak residency, this ain’t. To be clear, this IKEA is open for business.
Sulagna Misra is a writer, editor and frequent Toast contributor who writes a popular pitching newsletter, Pitching Shark. Here she shares some advice for aspiring freelancers. I’ve always had a tendency to go on at length about things I can’t stop thinking about, eager to talk about things I’ve just realized or weird jokes I’ve cooked up that no one in my vicinity really gets. It was only when I started pitching and…
Carla Bruce's previous work for The Toast can be found here.
Like many English majors during their college years, I scoffed with disdain when met with the all-too familiar, well-meaning query: Do you plan to teach?
And like many English majors post-graduation, I ended up becoming a teacher.
My feelings about my profession toss and turn as wildly as the tiny human in my uterus. How
I've loved Alexander Chee's writing for some time, from the powerful essays that served as my introduction to his work to his debut novel, Edinburgh. Chee won a Whiting Award for Edinburgh, and is a recipient of the NEA fellowship in fiction and residencies from the MacDowell Colony, Ledig House, and Civitella Ranieri. His writing has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, Tin House, Slate, and on NPR. The Toast asked Alexander to talk with us about writing, teaching, changes…
Like it or not, Imogene was under his thumb, a wayward girl far off her path and seeking comfort in the face of torn buildings. Her hair she’d dyed pink and blue in places and left blond elsewhere. Her head was a crown of confetti, chopped fronds you couldn’t even call mop or rag. Panteen didn’t want anybody else wanting her. She was his on the dead grass out by the levee, in
Sarah Miller's previous work for The Toast, for which she has been paid by Nikki in a timely fashion, can be found here.
To: evansackler-mayberry@website.com
From: Sarahpetersmiller@writer.com
Hi Evan,
I did two stories in January (to refresh your memory one was an analysis of Beyoncé’s last 100 photographed outfits, “100 Times Beyoncé was Perfect,” each with its own
Previously by Jacqueline Steiger: 16 Gemstones Renamed Correctly I have always considered myself a reader: always stuck in a book, always escaping into another world. As a child, I would read during dinner, at night under the covers, in the car. We had a rule that if I picked out a book at the bookstore, I could not start reading it until we exited, because my mother said she was tired of me "finishing…
Molly Minturn's previous work for The Toast can be found here.
When I showed up for my interview at the magazine, I was perfectly on time. The chapel clock chimed as I put my hand on the doorknob. Before I could turn it, the door opened and I saw Kevin, the managing editor, for the first time. The way I’ve framed it sounds like something out of a romantic comedy, but
