How does new writing emerge and find readers today? Why does one writer's work become famous while another's remains invisible? Making Literature Now tells the stories of the creators, editors, readers, and critics who make their living by making literature itself come alive. The book shows how various conditions-including gender, education, business dynamics, social networks, money, and the forces of literary tradition-affect the things we can choose, or refuse, to read. Amy Hungerford focuses her discussion on literary bestsellers as well as little-known traditional and digital literature from smaller presses, such as McSweeney's. She deftly matches the particular human stories of the makers with the impersonal structures through which literary reputation is made. Ranging from fine-grained ethnography to polemical argument, this book transforms our sense of how and why new literature appears-and disappears-in contemporary American culture.
"I value Hungerford's value for readers and, as her reader, I pay it forward: Making Literature Now is worth your attention."
Los Angeles Review of Books
"It's rare for literary criticism to bring news. But Making Literature Now is that decisive book that tells you things you want to know about the circumstances and conditions of writing today, even while it guides you through theoretical issues and conflicts with a friendly and ingenious intelligence. Hungerford's brilliant portraits of editors and writers, behind-the-scenes ethnography, and poi
Author of The Age of the Crisis of Man
"Part reportage, part book history, part literary criticism, part autobiographical essay, Making Literature Now cuts a thrillingly unpredictable path through the field of contemporary fiction. Few scholars know this terrain as intimately as Amy Hungerford does or can match her appreciation for its minor attractions and hidden heroes."
