Or, at least, that worked for Costa prize winner Caleb Azumah Nelson, who had been working at an Apple Store before an agent bit on his writing. - The Guardian (UK)
Bernadine Evaristo: "I’m always amused when my young students create frail, old characters hunched over walking sticks, only for them to tell me that they’re in their forties. I would have been the same." - LitHub
Writers and artists are not primarily trying to reform the world; their mission is to imagine it, to deliver it. Yes, there can be a profound ethical payload in such work, but it is rarely prescriptive or amenable to legislation. - LitHub
The old classics still have the power to move and transform young people in ways that no technical education can. We don’t have to dilute the practical value of a higher education nor ignore the insights of the academic humanities to restore the vitality of liberal education in our colleges and universities. - Aeon
If the confusion of tongues is not the primary source of human conflict, might the corollary be true: that resolving conflict doesn’t require a common language? - Psyche
People tend to give books that win classic or canonic status, presuming that a Newbery medalist from decades ago will always be good for today's kids. That isn't true, of course. So what should, and shouldn't, do we do about the winners that seem benighted these days? - Slate
We had to learn to insert ourselves into social media conversations, and that will continue to be a series of moving goalposts. Facebook, for instance, was still free when we started, but they now actively shut down any attempts to spread word if you aren’t paying for it. - LitHub
“US adults are reading roughly two or three fewer books per year than they did between 2001 and 2016,” according to the report. - Publishing Perspectives
As different novelistic styles, genres and methods of production have risen to prominence, they have enabled their own particular way of creating fictional terrain. These fictional worlds have, in turn, shaped our perceptions of the places we inhabit. - The Guardian
"A pivotal midterm election year, COVID frustrations and a backlash against efforts to call out systemic racism — driven disproportionately by white, suburban and rural parents — have made public schools ground zero in the culture wars." - Axios
Decolonising Shakespeare, with its historic links to English national identity, language and culture is a particularly knotty challenge. Shakespeare was writing in a country that had begun to trade in slaves just two years before his birth. - The Conversation
"'Cautionary tales are very important,' says Becky Chambers, one of the leading authors associated with the hopepunk movement, who has won a much-coveted Hugo Award for her sci-fi Wayfarer series. 'But if that is all that you have, you risk nihilism.'" - BBC
If the hatchet job ever died, it is — like Gawker — back with a vengeance. In fact, it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that the hatchet job is now the dominant mode of literary criticism for the internet era. - Los Angeles Review of Books
With audiobooks, voice narrators are (almost) everything. They can make a great story greater and a bad story better. This is especially true with book series. As one book leads to another, a narrator’s voice becomes ever more integral to the listening experience. - Washington Post
