Raise your hand if your TBR pile is getting precariously tall and might just crush you at any given moment? * Colson Whitehead, Harlem Shuffle (Doubleday) “In his eminently enjoyable new novel, Mr. Whitehead’s various powers have attained something like Read more >
To know whether a movie is feminist, use the Bechdel Test: to be a feminist movie, a movie must have two women talking to each other about something other than a man. At least, that’s the stance many thinkpieces, film Read more >
There are many reasons why an opaque and all-powerful shopping algorithm attached to the largest “store” in the history of the universe is bad for books (and people!), but here’s another one. According to this Business Insider article, when members Read more >
There have been designers. There have been celebrities. There have been media moguls. There has been a Jeff Bezos, and a Beyoncé. There has always, always been Anna Wintour. But a poet has never hosted the Met Gala . . Read more >
This morning, Kirkus announced its 18 finalists for the 2021 Kirkus Prize, which each year celebrates the best in fiction, nonfiction, and young readers’ literature. The winner in each category will be awarded $50,000, making the Kirkus Prize one of Read more >
I’m a sucker for a good short story collection. They are the commuter’s dream, every section break a gentle reminder to look up and make sure they didn’t skip your train stop. They are a salve for the short attention Read more >
The BBC National Short Story Award with Cambridge University has announced the names of this year’s five shortlisted writers. The award, considered to be one of the most prestigious honors for a single short story, will grant the winning writer Read more >
A denouement to the tote bags and the bucket hats and the pop-up shop and the mural and the coffee carts: after just three days of sales, Sally Rooney’s Beautiful World, Where Are You is Waterstones’s bestselling fiction title of Read more >
Sally Rooney’s Beautiful World, Where Are You, Lauren Groff’s Matrix, Colm Tóibín’s The Magician, Maggie Nelson’s On Freedom, and Joy Harjo’s Poet Warrior all feature among the best reviewed books of the week. Brought to you by Book Marks, Lit Read more >
Last year, University of Iowa Associate Professor Harry Stecopoulos led undergraduate students in an art rarely touched on in the classroom: fanfiction. In Stecopoulos’s honors fiction seminar, The Great Gatsby 2.0, the 19-student class met over Zoom to co-author their Read more >
State prosecutors in Nicaragua have ordered the arrest of one of the country’s most prominent writers, Sergio Ramírez, accusing the 78-year-old novelist of inspiring hatred and conspiring to destabilize Nicaragua. With only two months to go until the presidential elections Read more >
On this day in 1935, the highly acclaimed poet Mary Oliver was born in Maple Heights, Ohio. Oliver, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1984 and later the National Book Award for Poetry in 1992, was by all accounts a Read more >
Back in 2019, months before our current plague swept the earth, an industrious librarian at the University of Bristol was leafing though a 16th-century book and found within its pages a few stray fragments of parchment handwritten in Old French. Read more >
When asked to think of ancient Greek poetry, high, lofty verse is top of mind. But classics professor Tim Whitmarsh has found a very different type of Greek poem: a rhythmic, cheeky love poem that made its way via inscription Read more >
Exciting news for both fans of Stephen King and free expression: today, the author—partnering with Humble Bundle, which helps content creators provide exclusive art to support charities—released a never-before-published short story online. “Red Screen” is the story of a cop Read more >
All delicious mac and cheese recipes are alike; each gross mac and cheese recipe is gross in its own way. Or something. I haven’t actually prepared Leo Tolstoy’s family recipe for macaroni and cheese, but it involves only one cheese Read more >
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