'Having a bad sentence in front of her makes her “ill”—I feel pretty much the same': Laura van den Berg answers our new questions on prose style

Plus our next pick from the recent releases in literary fiction

Auraist went live on Substack a year ago. At that point we’d no clear idea how our focus on prose style would go down, as we’d no similar projects to measure ourselves against. The hope was that we’d end our first year with maybe a few hundred people having shown some interest.

So to the twenty-one thousand of you who’ve signed on to follow or subscribe to our picks and masterclasses: thank you. Your support has been extraordinary.

And thanks too to the writers, publishers, editors, and publicists who right from the start way exceeded our expectations of industry support.

The plan for the next year is to print-publish a collection of our author masterclasses, and to publish here book reviews that focus on style, and essays that explore more deeply the issues raised in those masterclasses. And, don’t you worry, we’ll get back to the lack of valid justifications for the existence of the self.

We’ll also extend our search for the best stylists to include more Substackers and indie writer…