Identifying with an activity is different from actually doing it. For example, 49% of Americans play video games, but only 10% identify as gamers. According to a recent survey we conducted, there’s ...

I think writers are admirable, on the whole, and I often wonder where they get all their ideas; but I do wish some of them wouldn’t try so hard to make their readers feel backward. There is really no ...

There’s no question that it takes a village to make a novel a success, no matter how wonderful the writing and the story. I started building a tribe that would help to define me as a novelist, in my ...

I find myself, rewardingly, in a Reader state of mind. It’s the result of spending time savoring the 300 pages of a book that some thought might never be created. “Free Chicago: 50 Years of the Reader ...

As a copyeditor before I became a writer, I can offer Helen Betya Rubinstein (“Notable & Quotable: Copyediting,” Feb. 1) the first rule of effective nonfiction writing: Never let the reader be ...

No one has written for the Reader longer than Michael Miner. No one could have. He had a story in the very first issue, and here he is today, with the lead piece 40 years later. For most of his Reader ...

The Midweek Read which comes tomorrow at 2 pm, was one of the most haunting and mysterious freelance stories we have printed. The author, Richard Smith, seems to have been in his early 20s when he ...