Tayari Jones's Blog
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Jul.13.2010
Since I wrote a post last week about the double standard in publishing, I have been directed to a number of blog posts on the issue. By and large, people are offended by the separate sections in the bookstore reserved for black literature. As I have said before, I think it's probably problematic,...
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Jul.12.2010
My editor and I have an ongoing discussion about willful incinsistencies in my new novel, The Silver Girl. To understand what follows, you have to know the plot. Here's the three sentence summary. The Silver Girl is the story of the two wives and two daughters of James Witherspoon. Gwen and her...
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Jul.07.2010
In the last few years, black writers have been speaking out about double standards in the world of publishing. Among these are Martha Southgate's NYT essay, "Writers Like Me" and more recently, Bernice McFadden's Black Writers in A Ghetto of the Publishing Industry's Making. In these...
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Jun.16.2010
As most of you know, I am Vice Chair of the Board of an amazing organization, Girls Write Now. At GWN we match teenage girls with writing mentors. It's a simple concept, which has been wildly successful. 100% of our girls have been accepted to college. They have won scholastic keys and last year we...
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Jun.09.2010
Tomorrow, CNN is running a special report about The Atlanta Child Murders, the formative event of my childhood and the subject of my first novel, Leaving Atlanta. Over a two year period, at least thirty black children were murdered in Atlanta. Two were students at my elementary school. I expect...
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Jun.07.2010
Today, I ran across and excellent blog post by Danielle Evans, author of the way-buzzed-up short story collection, Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self. Her post is about MFA programs and what they can and can't do. I love the way she approaches the issue with a sort of cool-headedness that is...
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Jun.06.2010
I just finished THE THING AROUND YOUR NECK, a short-story collection by the amazing Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. What can I say besides I loved it? I guess I can also say that she is a brilliant. Her characters are so real that I felt guilty that I was drinking coffee without offering them any. You...
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Jun.05.2010
As many of you know, one reason I started this blog was to let people know what opportunities are available for writers. Forgive me if this information is a repeat, but I wanted to take a minute and let new people know a little more about residencies. Here are a few FAQs. Q: What is a residency? A...
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Jun.04.2010
It's time to introduce a new term-- Workcrastinaton. If you're like me, you think that procrastination involves Law & Order marathons and twitter, and these are insidious forms of procrastination, for sure. But there is another, more sneaky, incarnation-- Workscrastination.
This is when you...
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Jun.03.2010
As a professor of creative writing and also the facilitator of many workshops, I have learned that sometimes the problem with a story is a personal problem, not a writerly problem. For example, a person who relies too heavily on dialogue-- that's a writerly problem. The same for overuse of adverbs...
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Jun.02.2010
Yesterday, I had a quick phone chat with my editor at Algonquin books. She called to tell me that she was finishing up her edits of the latest version of the manuscript. As Octavia in Leaving Atlanta said, "I call myself being cool, calm, and collected, but my stomach balled up in a knot while...
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Jun.01.2010
Just a reminder about my summer class at Provincetown. The bad news is that enrollment is low this year-- low enrollement=canceled class. The good news is that there is a discount available. (email me for details.) Meanwhile, here are the deets on the class. I hope it happens.
The class: HE SAID...
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May.30.2010
I would like to take this opportunity to thank my MFA students and the citizens of Newark, New Jersey for teaching me the value of my education. I'd always valued what I learned in school, but never gave myself any credit for having gone to school and completed the degree. When I left for school,...
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May.29.2010
Self-censorship is not always a bad thing. I think we all have things that we would like to write about, but don't think it would be worth the fall out. The question of what's worth it is entirely up to you. That said, never censor yourself while you are still writing the story. Save the...
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About Tayari
Tayari Jones was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia where she spent most of her childhood with the exception of the one year she and her family spent in Nigeria, West Africa. Although she has not lived in her hometown for over a decade, much of her writing...
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<a href="http://www.girlswritenow.org/gwn/">Girls Write Now</a...
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