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by Helen Betya Rubinstein (Author)
In this paradigm-shifting collection of essays, award-winning writer and acclaimed writing coach Helen Betya Rubinstein troubles the pieties at the heart of writing and publishing to ask: How else could this be?
From a viral indictment of copyediting to a widely taught essay on reimagining the writing workshop, Rubinstein's iconoclastic takes reliably instigate controversy and conversation. Feels Like Trouble builds on these provocations, drawing on experiences in creative writing programs, one-on-one coaching sessions, and publishers' meeting rooms to ask how we might reorient our practices away from harm. Whether speculating on the relationship between "good grammar" and "good taste," casting a critical eye on the ubiquitous "compliment sandwich," or demonstrating how the shared experience of an MFA program reverberates differently across twelve classmates' lives, these playful and useful essays will challenge readers' assumptions about what "good writing" means, and reinvigorate any writer, teacher, or editor's practice.
Author Biography
Helen Betya Rubinstein is the author of The Case Against Rubinstein, a memoir in the form of a trial against herself, forthcoming in 2027, and a booklet of lyric fictions, Because Sex Is a Story & Sex Is a Song. Her work has been published in Gulf Coast, The Kenyon Review, Literary Hub, and Jewish Currents, and awarded fellowships from the Hawthornden Foundation, the Saltonstall Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, and many others. Raised in New Orleans, Helen is a writing coach in ongoing practice with writers across genre and a professor at The New School.
