Sarah Glazer takes a second look at her reaction to an experiment.

I’m still not sure if I like novelist Ali Smith’s Artful. It has been marketed as a writing…

Sarah Glazer, a fan of Katherine Boo, wonders if her technique is for everyone

“But does it work as a novel?” That question from a member of my London book club startled me as we discussed Katherine Boo’s compelling reporting on slum-dwellers of Mumbai,…

Sarah Glazer Discovers Self-Publishing is Nothing New

We often talk as if self-publishing is something new. But as far back as the 18^th and 19^th centuries, renowned British…

Sarah Glazer worries that writers are getting shafted by Amazon

Like a lot of you, I got that “Dear Kindle customer” email from Amazon last week. It told me I was entitled to refunds on some past e-book purchases due to the settlement of a price-fixing case with publishers.

 I normally wouldn’t consider myself a fan of price-fixing, but I confess my heart…

Sarah Glazer confesses her weakness for historical fiction even as some historians bash it.



I learned most of my history from historical fiction—at least at first. Mary Renault’s The Persian Boy hooked me on Alexandrian Greece.  Shakespeare’s history plays, on public television during my childhood, thrust me into a fascinating world of intrigue and assassination among…

Sarah Glazer discovers new vistas in graphic novels.



Superman and Classic Comics were my favorite illicit reading when I was a kid, usually devoured furtively in a…

Sarah Glazer Wonders if Fiction is Sometimes Truer than Truth

A familiar figure from my childhood popped up on the page while I was reading my mother’s memoir of growing up in New York some years ago. There was our neighborhood baker, Mr. K., instantly recognizable by the description of his shelves, which usually held more books than loaves, and by the portrait of a displaced, bookish Eastern…

Sarah Glazer examines the legend of female rule and finds some problems.

Once upon a time, women ruled over men, and women goddesses were worshipped as supreme. That’s a world view that’s been picked up by Wicca and The Da Vinci…

Sarah Glazer Looks at Motherhood in the Norwegian Paradise and is Envious

 How often do you call up a male economist to find out he’s too busy feeding his 11-month old and his kindergartener to come to the phone for an interview? I’m not just talking about helping out. This economist is in the 3^rd month of his 6-month parental leave while his wife is back at work.

 Ok it’s a trick question. This economist lives in the Nordic Nirvana of Norway. He and his wife were…

Sarah Glazer wonders what will happen to the women of Arab Spring after the revolution is over.

 Are we getting the whole story about the part women are playing in the Arab Spring turmoil and its aftermath? That was the question in my mind as I headed for a panel discussion in London last month with women activists from Libya, Bahrain and Iran.

 The first thing that struck me was…

Sarah Glazer Wonders if Self-publishing is Losing its Stigma

 Back in 2005, I wrote an article for the New York Times about a new phenomenon: An author who was sure her book would be a best-seller had spurned traditional publishers, lured by the higher profit share she…

Sarah Glazer Gets Angry about Mining Devastation and Wonders How to Spread the Word

Last night I saw a documentary that made me really angry about coal mining, just as it was supposed to.…

Amidst Murdoch’s excesses, Sarah Glazer finds restrictions on journalists more worrying

One of the joys of moving to London 5 years ago was my morning perusal of the local newsstand. As I read the…

Sarah Glazer Remembers Something Else that Could Only Happen to a Woman

 I was overwhelmed and touched by the generous comments from women in the She Writes community to my last blog  about my experience with attempted rape when I was a student at the University of…

French Journalists’ Silence on IMF's Strauss-Kahn Reminds Sarah Glazer of Her Own Complicity

It’s an odd feeling to spend a month writing an article about the something as dry as the European currency union only to have it sensationalized the day of publication by an international sex scandal.

 “But what does it mean for Greece?” my editors queried, as the…

In Which Sarah Glazer Indulges in the Guilty Pleasure of Paper Books

The bell jingles when you open the door just like the quaint shops in old movies, the books stand open on the shelves inviting you to look at the colorful endpapers, and there’s a scent from fresh flowers in a vase.

That’s the enticing atmosphere of a bookshop in London’s Bloomsbury…

Sarah Glazer loves her new iPad for travel but finds it has drawbacks for complex plots.

My new iPad, purchased for a 24-hour flight to New Zealand,…

Sarah Glazer discovers a lot of great books and movies won’t come out of copyright this year and wonders if a century is too long to protect them.

For some people this New Year’s Day was…