Category: creative nonfiction

How do we make reading fun again?

Reading for pleasure is down. What’s a writer to do?

As a kid growing up in the ’60s and ’70s, I remember public service announcements interrupting my Saturday-morning cartoon time to tell me about an organization called Reading Is Fundamental. RIF is still around, and still working to promote literary among children in the U.S., but judging from a recent study of American’s reading habits, fewer people in this country are reading for pleasure than they were two decades ago.

A PSA for Reading Is Fundamental

According to this study, “reading for pleasure in the United States has declined by more than 40% over the last 20 years–raising urgent questions about the cultural, educational and health consequences of a nation reading less.”

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Friday Five: ‘All Our Tomorrows’ author Amy DeBellis

‘Don’t be afraid to write stuff that’s mediocre. If you don’t write the mediocre, you can’t build up to the good and the great.’

For Amy DeBellis, “writing is a way to express negative emotions: fear, grief, rage,” she says. “I also find that makes for more interesting stories.”

To call Amy’s stories interesting is like calling Stephen King’s novel Christine a book about an old clunker. Her short stories may glimmer on the surface, but beneath that veneer, the gruesome and bizarre are exposed, but not in an overt, obvious horror-genre way. She also sets many of her writings in a dystopian near future–one not so far off from our current world and circumstances, just enough to help us imagine what those current circumstances can lead to.

Amy’s astounding debut novel, All Our Tomorrows (CLASH Books, 2025), explores the lives of three Gen Z women navigating late-stage capitalism in a near-future New York City.

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