Hilary Zaid, Forget I Told You This (and new books by Joan Silber, Marisa Silver, and David Haynes)

Hilary Zaid, Forget I Told You This (and new books by Joan Silber, Marisa Silver, and David Haynes)

Upstairs, twinkle lights garlanded the doorways of makeshift lofts, thin walls draped with heavy carpets to muffle noise. The floor felt solider up here, at least, and I was only half-alarmed by the sight of a piano—a black, squat baby grand, like my mother’s—under the scales of a wire-frame dragon. Around us, pressing close against our skin, all the warmth of the warehouse gathered like a thick blanket, heavy with weed, cut with the sharp tang of electricity and Blue’s midnight scent.

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Marisa Silver on Leonard Michaels’s “Murderers”

Marisa Silver on Leonard Michaels’s “Murderers”

(Guest post by Marisa Silver)

Although it’s usually a character in a particular situation that launches me into a novel, I don’t really know how to write a book until I locate its tone. Tone is such a tricky concept. It’s aural, but it almost feels physical to me, as if it has to move through my body in order for me to make the right language, rhythm, and structure choices that create the singing voice of the novel.

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