Today, the Library of Congress announced that Librarian Carla Hayden has appointed beloved poet Joy Harjo to serve a second term as the 23rd Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry for the United States. “Joy Harjo is such an inspiring and Read more >
Well, it’s almost May, and you know what that means: the end of the weirdest National Poetry Month of all of our lives. To close it out, the Academy of American Poets has organized Shelter In Poems: A Virtual Reading, Read more >
As the coronavirus pandemic continues to highlight the massive and devastating inequality in the US, the work of socially progressive publishers is more important than ever. With the goal of supporting one another during the uncertainty of the pandemic, a Read more >
The Obamas are building a media empire, one that has already seen such immense success you would think they were Old Hollywood. Barack and Michelle Obama’s production company, Higher Ground, scored a big victory earlier this year when a documentary Read more >
I don’t know about you, but I am desperate, these days, for good news—not to mention things to look forward to. So I was happy to be alerted this afternoon to one undeniably good thing in the pipeline of the Read more >
While the rest of us feel guilty about not using our quarantine productively, a group of 46 Portuguese writers is co-authoring a serial novel that begins with scientists searching for the vaccine to a virus that has overtaken the globe. Read more >
The best thing I saw on Twitter yesterday had absolutely nothing to do with Sally Rooney; it was the delightfully bonkers AI meme generator. After nearly an hour spent in a cycle of refresh, cackle, and repeat, I’m more than Read more >
Wish you could visit your favorite indie bookstore right now? For the next best thing (sort of), Lookout Books has partnered with a handful of beloved indie bookstores to bring you, Zoom users (as we all are now), free virtual Read more >
Before we lose our minds over the (exhilarating) mic drop yesterday by the Pentagon confirming that, yes, those images of unidentified aerial phenomena taken by Navy pilots and posted by former Blink-182 frontman and UFO enthusiast Tom DeLonge were, in fact, Read more >
There’s nothing like banning a book to make it seem cool. The Matanuska-Susitna (Mat-Su) Borough School Board, which is based in Palmer, Alaska and whose district comprises more than 19,000 students, voted to take five novels off the high school Read more >
According to a recent study of ebook usage in the UK, conducted by the Audience Agency, men are likely to give up reading a book before page 50, while women more often make it to page 100 (at least). That Read more >
Fun Fact: I once interviewed Terry Pratchett, the patron saint of irreverent fantasy, who died in 2015, for my college newspaper back in Dublin when he visited the campus to receive an honorary degree some ten years ago. On the Discworld adaptation.">Read more >
The days in quarantine would all blend together if it weren’t for Tuesday, which is the day new books hit the (now metaphorical) shelves. Here are a few of the titles dropping today. You can get them from your local Read more >
Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy. Duct tape your glasses and dust off your conches because after a 30-year absence, Ralph, Read more >
I have a low-grade obsession with the project of teaching computers how to joke. I assume it has something to do with my poetry education, which gave me both a greater appreciation of humor (and the many ways in which Read more >
It’s hard to believe that Bookshop, the online retailer that shares a percentage of each purchase with independent bookstores, a platform that today officially reached an incredible milestone—$1 million raised to support struggling booksellers all across the country—was supposed to be Read more >
Yes, it’s true: the British author Evelyn Waugh’s first wife was also named Evelyn. (Evelyn Florence Margaret Winifred Gardner, to be precise.) But as you might imagine, if you know anything about the Taylor Swift-Taylor Lautner debacle of 2009, things Read more >
It’s a big week for literacy advocates all around the country in light of a federal appeals court ruling that enshrines the constitutional right “to a basic minimum education.” The U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals handed its precedent-making decision Read more >
Quarantine: not just a thing for humans and those tigers at the Bronx Zoo. It turns out the New York Public Library may choose to quarantine its books between borrowers to make sure they’re not transmitting COVID-19, New York Public Read more >
As people around the world revisit classic examples of “lockdown literature” and writing about plagues, including, most obviously, Albert Camus’ 1947 novel, it’s worth remembering that even during protracted periods of global uncertainty and pain, people like Camus were just, well, Read more >
