What should professors do about AI generated papers? When I returned to teaching from a sabbatical last year I noticed that the students in my general education history classes suddenly learned how to write. Were they using ChatGPT to write […]
writing
Walter Lippman worried about a time when people “cease to respond to truths, and respond simply to opinions—what somebody asserts, not what actually is.”
Check out Jeannette Cooperman’s essay at Common Reader on the late white-suited writer Tom Wolfe. She has some interesting thoughts on the so-called “New Journalism” of the 1960s and 1970s. A taste: Did Wolfe do such a good job capturing […]
Our favorite essays of 2024 from other little magazines
More of our favorite things!
Current writer and novelist, Fred Durbin, featured in USA Today
Fred Durbin is part of the typewriter revolution!
“Edit with a pen, as if you were conducting a symphony”
I loved this piece on the late magazine editor and writer Lewis Lapham. The author is Elias Altman, a former Lapham staffer. I was a regular reader of Lapham’s Quarterly before it went on hiatus. Now that Lapham is gone, […]
Romance writing, sports journalism, and narrative history
I don’t think I have ever read a romance novel, but I have read a lot of sports journalism. Over at LitHub, Jamie Harrow chronicles the similarities between writing romance novels and writing about sports. It’s a really interesting piece. […]
Ideas are best mediated through institutions, not by individuals. Support our work at CURRENT!
I was recently reading Helen Lewis’s essay on podcaster Joe Rogan in the recent issue of The Atlantic. It’s a really interesting piece and I learned some things about Rogan I didn’t know before I read it. At one point […]
Writing to figure it out
Check out Mitch Therieau‘s recent review of Greil Marcus’s What Nails It. Therieau writes: We don’t always nail it. Sometimes the writing overstretches, sometimes it manhandles its objects or produces a phantom version of them virtually unrecognizable to anyone who […]
Is contemporary (fiction) writing getting worse?
Tyson Duffy’s essay on why fiction is getting worse is a worthwhile read.
What was it like to be Joan Didion’s personal assistant?
Here is a taste of an excerpt of Cory Leadbeater’s memoir, The Uptown Local: Joy, Death, and Joan Didion: In the fall of 2013, my days and nights were wonderful and simple. I would wake in the morning to find […]
The New Journalism and the “war over creative nonfiction”
I will start this post with this: If you are a creative nonfiction writer we want to see your work at Current. Maybe this piece by Eric Bennet at The Chronicle of Higher Education will inspire you to send us […]
Is it okay to use Grammarly?
Grammarly is an AI tool. Therein lies the problem.
Writing in notebooks
The picture above are just a few of my writing notebooks. I fill these notebooks with ideas for books, blog posts, op-eds, magazine articles, book chapters, etc. They include early drafts of published pieces, grant deadline reminders, diary-like entries on […]
A writer’s memento mori: on the death of a laptop
The death of a computer elicits all the feels–and awkward questions.
Frank Bruni offers his “best sentences of 2023”
Here is Bruni at The New York Times: Over recent days, I took on a daunting task — but a delightful one. I reviewed all the passages of prose featured in the For the Love of Sentences section of my Times […]
Why good writing matters
Artificial intelligence cannot replace the act of writing. Here is a taste of Frank Bruni’s column at The New York Times: When my friend Molly Worthen, a history professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a […]
Does activism lead to bad writing?
George Packer of The Atlantic thinks so. Here is a taste of his recent piece: It seems natural for creative people to speak out at a time of crisis. We look to them for words and images that provide clarity […]
Ideas in progress: a conversation with Robert Erle Barham on parenting, writing, and writing while parenting
“My kids wake me up to marvels all around—especially since they themselves are such a source of wonder.”
How to write a book proposal with a toddler jumping on your back
Yes, you can write a book proposal (and book)–even with a toddler jumping on your back.
Four myths about working with a university press
Check out Rebecca Colesworthy piece at The Chronicle of Higher Education. Colesworthy is an acquisition editor at SUNY-Press. Here are the myths: Read the entire piece here.