Seven haikus for failed hip-hop clothing lines.

Lionel Shriver: “I have grown perversely nostalgic for my previous commercial failure—when my focus was pure, and the books were still fun to write, even if nobody read them.”

An ode to literary siblings.

“It became crystal clear that some piece-of-shit scam artist was preying on aspiring writers just hoping for a wisp of recognition. I considered this an added insult—nobody deserves to be swindled, but it took a particular kind of cruelty to bilk sweet, earnest, well-meaning writers, especially the ones who’d worked hard enough to actually finish a book and were now struggling to get it out there and read by people.” Davy Rothbart on literary vigilantism.

Spanking may be bad for vocabulary.