The Books We Loved in 2021

"conflict is the essential difference between fiction and all other types of prose narrative. For fiction is a structured imitation of life, not life itself. Fiction organizes and reforms the raw material of fact to emphasize and clarify what is most significant in life for its characters. What do they want? What do they love?-hope for?-fear? What is up for grabs in the world of this story? What do these events mean to these characters? Because frequently their lives will be forever changed by the events of the story. In any case, the possibility of change must arise: that's conflict, and without conflict, fiction does not exist."

Lee Smith

Happy New Year!

Hallelujah! We’re out of 2020! If there is one thing we’ve learned during the pandemic, it is that a supportive community is crucial. Thank you for being such a crucial part of our Sweet Lab writing community. We look forward to spending the next year with you. and wish you many hours of writing pleasure as we write, read and discuss our work together.

The Year in Review

During the pandemic, our commute evaporated and our commitments dwindled. This left more time to read, write and edit, one pandemic blessing. We read great novels, memoirs and stories in 2020 and many of our students saw their work get published. Here are the standouts:

Novels: Brit Bennett, The Vanishing Half; Kimberly Brubaker Bradley, Fighting Words, Jill Ciment, The Body in Question; Sanae LeMoine, The Margot Affair, Maggie O’Farrell, Hamnet; Etaf Rum, A Woman is No Man; Douglas Stewart, Shuggie Bain; Diane Zinna, The All-Night Sun

Memoirs: John Bayley, Elegy for iris; Bess Kalb, Nobody Will Tell You This But Me; Carmen Maria Machado, In the Dream House; Hisham Matar, The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between, Jill Ciment, Half a Life, Nina Riggs, The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying.

Student Work: Elissa Caterfino Mandel, Bulls and Bears, My Catholic Husband Wanted Me to Remarry a Jewish Man When He Died; Randi Mazzella, Oy Vey: It’s Christmas Time; Judy Silvan, Bottom Up Gratitude, Jo Varnish, Between the Eyes, The Mussels.

Students have work forthcoming in  Kveller, Square Wheel Press, Strings, and elsewhere.

Check out our students and editing clients’ published pieces

Sarah Gundle, Wishbone: An angry teenager, a pandemic, and how a buy-nothing group helped us write a new story (Visible)

Leslie Dannin Rosenthal, This Daily Jewish Practice Became an Unexpected Comfort During Coronavirus (Kveller)

Jo Varnish, A Stepmother’s Love: A Story of Caring, Sharing and Misplaced Shame (The Girlfriend)