Amid a move for educational “prioritization,” Howard University is dissolving its classics department. Tenured faculty will be dispersed to other departments, where their courses can still be taught. But the university has sent a disturbing message by abolishing the department. - Washington Post
"In July 1941, Richard Wright, then America's leading Black author, began writing the novel he felt was his masterpiece. Written 'at white heat,' … The Man Who Lived Underground was drafted in just six frenzied months. … Following a crushing rejection from Wright's publisher and a truncated publication as a short story, the novel was shelved for eighty years...
Tyler Gillespie, author of The Thing About Florida: Exploring a Misunderstood State and Florida Man: Poems, traces the course of this icon of the weird from the old website Fark.com ("We Don't Make the News. We Mock It"), looks at the long history of Florida Man/Woman-type stories (e.g., "Edna May's recipe for being a successful wife to the ultra-rich"...
"In the marketplace of books, it can be hard to find that next, necessary book. I keep a list of what to read next – lots of people do. But what is offered to me? Mostly big books from big names, published in editions up into the millions of copies (Michelle Obama’s initial print run for Becoming was 3.4...
Four party-affiliated organizations, including the Republican National Committee, collectively spent more than $1 million during the past election cycle mass-purchasing books written by GOP candidates, elected officials and personalities, according to Federal Election Commission expenditure reports. The purchases helped turn several volumes into bestsellers. - Washington Post
“It’s not really polite to tell other writers they’re bad writers, because they tend to fling it back to you. In response, I would say he’s a clunky, self-indulgent writer … His books are all very long and baggy. They’re about his interpretation of Dylan songs … and it’s incredibly boring.” - The Guardian
One of the big literary events of last week? The cover reveal for Sally Rooney's new novel. "In recent years, book cover design has taken on a higher profile, and we may be seeing a new heyday for book design. It was Rooney’s 2018 novel Normal People that Arter believes signalled the shift towards the book cover as a 'cultural phenomenon...
Michael McClure's final editor, Garrett Caples: "As any editor can tell you, turning a manuscript into a book is an affair in itself. Michael’s poetry is not easy to lay out. It’s always centered on the page, but only sometimes dead-centered, where you can just press a button and you’re fine. Often enough, he centered by hand and eye,...
But the prizes are numerous, and many American writers won prizes in many other categories and genres, including poetry, history, current interest (where Isabel Wilkerson's Caste took top place), mystery, horror, and more. A full list is at the link. - Los Angeles Times
The emails appear to come from the winning authors, and to connect to Paypal accounts that could conceivably be associated with them. "Over the past year, at least five British book prizes have been targeted by the same swindle — and one has even paid out. In March 2020, the Rathbones Folio Prize paid £30,000, about $41,000, to a scammer posing...
"Public libraries in the United States started to proliferate in the late 1800s and early 1900s, often founded by women's clubs and other social groups seeking to benefit their communities. Their early focus was on classic literature, which was thought to improve and transform the reader. However, thanks in part to librarianship during the pandemic, a shift occurred...
"Archaeologists digging in the ancient Canaanite settlement of Lachish have unearthed a 3,500-year-old pottery shard inscribed with what they believe is the oldest text found in Israel that was written using an alphabetic script. Earlier Canaanite texts are known, but they were written using hieroglyphs or cuneiform characters." - Haaretz (Israel)
"In the age of texting and emailing, the world is full of Cyranos: Getting quick, surreptitious help writing high-stakes messages has never been easier, whether that means enlisting friends to consult on a flirty note in a dating app or turning to a co-worker for assistance on a sensitive email to your boss. Although this sort of collaboration is...
The newspaper/website raised $9 million through its dedicated US nonprofit alone over the past 12 months, and has been both active and transparent about getting NGO support to cover specific areas such as human rights and climate change. That said, philanthropy is nowhere near being a primary revenue source, "and after one glorious year of not losing money, The...
When they do get reformed, it's usually because autocrats force the changes through (as with Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and Mao Zedong). "A big reason spelling systems never seem to get overhauled in more liberal societies is that those in a position to change the rules have learned the old ones. Put another way, the type of folk who were...
