Literary writing in the 21st century : conversations / by Anis Shivani.

The ten best books of the last decade -- Symposium: how can reviewing be made relevant for the new generation? -- Favorite poems -- Symposium: what is the present state of American poetry? -- Have feminist poets kept up with the legacy of Sylvia Plath? A reassessment fifty years later -- White House poetry reading leaked! Billy Collins, Elizabeth Alexander, and the secret rejection letter -- Symposium: short stories vs. novels-which is the more rewarding form and why?-- Is there a short story renaissance in America? Interview with Harper Perennial editor Calvert Morgan -- The last good 9/11 novel: interview with Teddy Wayne -- Should writing try to humanize particular groups of people? -- Symposium: what is distinctive about Arab-American writing today? -- Cormac McCarthy's The road: doing apocalypse the Southern way -- Why Salman Rushdie so richly deserves the Nobel Prize in literature -- Symposium response: is American literature too insular? -- Symposium: who is the most important contemporary fiction writer? -- We are all neoliberals now: the new genre of plastic realism in contemporary American fiction -- The Pakistani novel of class comes of age: Mohsin Hamid's How to get filthy rich in rising Asia -- The millennial generation's literary escapism toward the end of empire: Dave Eggers's A hologram for the king --

Orhan Pamuk's original contribution to the theory of the novel: the naive and the sentimental novelist -- Symposium response: how do religious or spiritual beliefs affect my writing? -- What is the appeal of detective fiction? Dashiell Hammett's The continental op as a test case -- Symposium: who is the most important contemporary poet? -- Creative writing finally gets the satire it deserves: interview with John McNally -- Thoughts for AWP week: the glut in creative writing is the reverse side of the drought in the humanities -- The writer as confidence man: the heart versus the mind in James Magnuson's wily novel of creative writing -- New rules for writers -- Symposium: how are America's little magazines coping with technological and economic change? -- How to put together a successful poetry anthology: Ryan G. van Cleave on the challenges of summing up contemporary Chicago -- What must indie presses do today to survive and thrive? Wings Press of San Antonio shows the way -- Paul Ruffin on the role of Texas Review Press in the southern literary scene --

Symposium: what is good or bad about southern writing today? -- How can indie bookstores succeed in the new economy? San Antonio's Twig Book Shop as a case study -- A fabled indie press reaches maturity: what can we learn from the experience of Coffee House Press? -- How does a successful university press work? Behind the scenes with Princeton University Press director Peter Dougherty -- Symposium: have online literary journals come of age? -- How can poetry become eclectic, global, and diverse? Interview with New York Quarterly editor Raymond Hammond -- The three best books of 2013 -- Symposium: what goes into the making of an outstanding book cover? -- A manifesto against authors writing for free.

An incredible array of today's leading fiction writers, poets, critics, editors, publishers, and booksellers engage in no-holds-barred dialogue about the challenging issues facing writing and publishing today. These wide-ranging cultural conversations are mediated by one of the most thought-provoking literary critics and are sure to prompt spirited dialogue both inside and outside the classroom.