Editors do their work behind the scenes, but they can have as much to do with a novel’s success (or failure) as the author does.

I know what makes you different. Each word, every part of speech, even the length of each sentence — none of these are random choices.

Writing as an individual pursuit has been replaced by “community”—and literature is the worse for it.

What’s behind literary inflation? Authors get more verbose as they garner success, but prestige TV has also changed readers’ habits

Apparently we're self-medicating with caffeine and high-sugar foods, and it's not good for our brains.

A genre that partially defined the last decade of the Internet has essentially disappeared.

Men are often portrayed in the company of dogs. They hunt together, run happily side by side, and ride shoulder to shoulder in mud-splattered pickups—the p

On a recent afternoon in Boston, Betsy Fermano walked through an exhibition titled “Ernest Hemingway: Between Two Wars” at the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum. Among the artifacts—vintage photos, paintings, and handwritten stories from Hemingway—she spotted a family name in a manuscript on display: Coates.

There are just too many of us out there. Most of us reside at the bottom of the blogging barrel, trying to scrape a recommend or two, from…

Scholars who want to write beyond the academy often ask, where are the models for such a thing? Jill Lepore is often the answer. She is an accomplished essayist, and a public voice for producing historical work that engages with audiences well beyond the classroom. Her publications have attended to technologies of evidence and writing, to the craft of historical writing itself, and to subjects as wide-ranging as Wonder Woman and board games. Benjamin Cohen spoke with Lepore about the challenges and meanings of writing for a broad public audience.

The author on guilty time out, online distractions and getting into ‘the zone’

One of the things that’s commonly imagined is that indexing is, in the age of Google, something that can be outsourced to a computer algorithm. Dead wrong. A concordance – essentially, an alphabetical list of all the words in a book with page references – can be done by a computer. But an index, to be useful, needs to be done by a human. In a book about the Middle East, say, an entry that said: “Syria 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 10, 23, 25, 26, 27 … ” would be no use at all.

Patterson is open about the fact that he collaborates with others, but a new study which tests the actual contribution of words by a person to a text reveals that he may not be the principal writer of his books. He has been described as a co-publisher, more of a brand than a writer. This is a distinction worth exploring, because it is Patterson’s name that looms largest on his covers.

Jill Santopolo, author of the new novel The Light We Lost and career editor, shares her commandments for getting your writing done efficiently.

would like to tell you about the biggest lie in book publishing. It appears in the biographies and social media profiles of almost every working “author” today. It’s the word “best seller.” This isn’t about how The New York Times list is biased (though it is). This isn’t about how authors buy their way onto various national best-seller lists by buying their own books in bulk (though they do). No, this is about the far more insidious title of “Amazon Bestseller” — and how it’s complete and utter nonsense.

Oh, the uniformity!

I remember the first time a piece I wrote was rejected by an Editor.

A series of instincts, thousands of tiny adjustments, hundreds of drafts … What is the mysterious process writers go through to get an idea on to the page?

Pulitzer Prize winner Jennifer Egan talks about the research behind her forthcoming historical novel, “Manhattan Beach.”

Inspired by Trump's misogyny, Laura Jones and Heather McDaid decided to start a grassroots literary revolution – and their debut is about to drop a bomb.

Why are shy people such as E.B. White, J.K. Rowling, and Joan Didion drawn to writing as a career? Are shy authors more likely to grasp ‘the nature and beauty of brevity’?

In his new book, data journalist Ben Blatt takes a by-the-numbers look at literary classics and finds some fascinating patterns

While “fake news” may be a current term of art, the literary hoax is a tale as old as the printed word. Whether it’s the fabrication of a Bob Dylan quote or the concoction of a madcap Howard Hughes tale, what happens after a writer’s lies are exposed? Paul Elie charts the course, from motive to mea culpa, of authors Jonah Lehrer, Clifford Irving, and more.

Backed by the cheery fiddle and guitar of Tom Moss’s “Gypsy Night Dance,” the bespectacled white-haired gentleman in a blue blazer, striped bow tie, and pocket square is holding forth on the language issue of the day. “I’m sometimes asked,” he tells the camera, speaking patiently but gesturing intensely, “‘Is “data” singular or plural?’ The […]

Rebellious Russian poet and author of Babi Yar, who became a celebrity in the west

A 4-step plan for starting a daily blogging habit.

For most of my twenties, I jumped from one dream to the next. But through it all, I secretly wanted to be a writer.

Meet the feuding duo behind one of America’s greatest (fictional) detectives. By Robert Latona.

During the first season of HBO's Silicon Valley, the megalomaniac CEO of the search giant Hooli offers protagonist Richard Hendricks (Thomas Middleditch) $10 million for his still-nascent startup, Pied Piper. The initial script called for a much bigger offer, but show creator Mike Judge thought that was over the top. Judge said, "that's too much, no one is going to buy that it's $100 million," Middleditch said at a South By Southwest panel...

Jason Matthews was a CIA spy for more than 30 years during the height of the Cold War, from Asia to the Caribbean to the Soviet Union. Now he's got a new assignment: writing deadly accurate thrillers. By Josh Eells.

When Richard Russo published Everybody’s Fool last week, he joined the club of authors who waited more than a decade before publishing a sequel. Whether this group took their time creating a rich fantasy world (like J.R.R. Tolkien), checking in with characters to study the passage of time (à la Harper Lee), or for no easily decipherable reason (several examples on this list), long-gestating follow-up work demonstrates the power authors have over their readers.

Jessa Crispin on why she is shutting down Bookslut: "The books community that my site joined was driven by enthusiasm not clicks, goodwill and not money – and that culture has gone."

To match the volume of writing Asimov produced in his lifetime, you would have to write a full-length novel every two weeks for 25 years.

In a time of crisis and panic, artists and writers can help remind us that we are more than just voters and statistics. By Margaret Atwood.

After a crisis of confidence, the Swedish pop musician – celebrated for dispensing nuggets of advice to fans – has learned some new life lessons of his own.