ArtsJournal: Arts, Culture, Ideas

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Using Social Media To Teach The Secret Language Of Enslaved African-Americans

"Videos teaching how to speak and write in Tut, and the history behind the language have flooded TikTok in recent months. … Now Tut speakers are teaching others through Google Classroom and Discord. Instagram pages have shared guides on writing and reading the Tut alphabet." - NBC News

Tennessee Teacher Fired For Teaching Ta-Nehisi Coates Essay

Matt Hawn assigned his high schoolers in Blountville, in the state's northeast corner, Coates's "The First White President," which argues that Donald Trump was elected because of white grievance. He says he wanted the class to assess the essay critically; the school board wasn't having it. - The Atlantic

The Mysterious Phisher Haunting The Publishing World

For four years, someone has been impersonating dozens of agents, editors, translators, and others in the book business to get early copies of new manuscripts. Attempts to find the culprit end up going in circles, and the manuscripts never get publicly leaked. What's going on? - New York Magazine

Children’s Book About Same-Sex Parents That Caused Row In Hungary Is Now In Russia

"(Weeks) after a Hungarian bookshop was fined for selling a children's story about … a child with same-sex parents, the same book has been published in Russia – but with an '18+' label on it in deference to the country's so-called 'gay propaganda' law." - The Guardian

A Trick To Get Beneath The Words

"On the first day of every month, I pick a poem, and then I read that poem every day that month." - The New York Times Magazine

Co-Founder Of Snopes Caught In Plagiarism Scandal

David Mikkelson and his then-wife started Snopes.com in 1994 in "a quest to debunk misinformation online." But a BuzzFeed investigation has found that he plagiarized dozens of stories from news outlets, frequently under a pseudonymous byline. - BuzzFeed

Hachette Will Pay $240 Million To Buy Leading Indie Publisher

No, they're not spending that kind of money for a literary press. Workman Publishing is the company behind the Page-a-Day calendars and the Brain Quest and What To Expect When … series of informational books. - Publishers Weekly

All The Reasons Book Reviewing Is Lacking

If there is a problem with book reviewing the problem is that those of us who are good at it aren’t good enough, there aren’t enough of us, and we aren’t doing a good enough job of expanding the scope of literary discourse. - Gawker

The Case Against Beach Reading

Reading is not a beachy activity. Reading is for armchairs and bay windows and loverless beds. Bring a book to the beach and you’re agreeing to ruin the book. - The Atlantic

Behold The Manifesto!

This is a form that asks readers to suspend their disbelief, and so like any piece of theater, it trades on its own vulnerability, invites our complicity, as if only the quality of our attention protects it from reality’s brutal puncture. - BookForum

The Fine, Poetic Art Of Literary Name-Calling

Consider "Tricky Dick," "Slick Willy," and, of course, the recent president, that "short-fingered vulgarian." - LitHub

Readers Do Love Books About Sisters

And if you're one of the legion who adore Lizzy and Jane, or Meg and Jo, or ... etc., here's a list for you. (If you're not there yet, here's a starting point.) - LitHub

The Coming Conservative Publishing Backlash To Racial Reckoning Books

Yeah, no thank you, a lot of Americans don't want to reckon. Better, some imprints think, to make a lot of money off of conservative books like Fault Lines: The Social Justice Movement and Evangelicalism’s Looming Catastrophe or American Marxism. - The New York Times

The Loneliness Of The Full-Time Writer

It's a luxury writers with other full-time jobs long for - but the lucky often discover the luxury of being a full-time writer is a poisoned chalice. - LitHub

The Problem With Today’s Book Reviews

The main problem is that the contemporary American book review is first and foremost an audition — for another job, another opportunity, another day in the content mine... - N+1

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