Perhaps some of it might be found in erasure. "Sometimes when it’s hard to write, that constraint gives you a place to start. It’s a bit like a painter working with a limited palette: You have both a solid foundation from which to begin your poem, and the challenge to create something using only what you have in front...
Rent a bookstore for a date. Yes, an entire bookstore. "The experience is BYOB (and food), but the store provides candles—and, of course, exclusive browsing access. What better way to get to know someone that by judging their taste in books?" - LitHub
It's pretty great, honestly. Ask Angie Thomas. "Had you told little Angie that 20-something years ago, she wouldn’t have believed she wrote something that made it that far — that this little Black girl in Mississippi whose family sometimes didn’t know if they would have food would have a book in the White House." - The New York Times
Mary-Kay Wilmers was one of LRB's co-founders in 1979, and after co-editing it since 1988 became sole editor in 1992. Two women will take over: "Wilmers will continue at the paper as consulting editor, with the LRB’s deputy editor Jean McNicol and senior editor Alice Spawls succeeding her." - The Guardian (UK)
Brian Lin: "At the start of the pandemic, I emailed friends, colleagues, and mentors, all POC, to ask two questions about their literary lives. What is a recurring situation that’s destabilizing and hard to navigate? What guidance would you offer a fellow person of color for navigating such situations?" - Los Angeles Review of Books
The word for pandemic is absolutely Greek, but nearly everything else the Greeks discuss about COVID-19 is English - and a leading linguist is worried. "Far too many are entering spoken and written Greek. On the television you hear phrases such as ‘rapid tests are being conducted via drive-through’, and almost all the words are English. It’s as...
Bernadine Evaristo, author of 2019's Booker prizewinning Girl, Woman, Other, is launching, or relaunching, a series of Black British novels that didn't quite make it into the British canon. "Our appreciation of literature is deepened when we understand the foundations from which each new generation creates literature anew, but because so much of the body of black British literature...
"The danger of Trump using a presidential library to burnish his image is far more serious, with the ex-president and his surrogates still promoting the idea that his electoral loss was somehow fraudulent. That creates an ongoing uncertainty in American public life, which Trump and even more unscrupulous actors will use to further division, inflame tension, exacerbate racism and...
"Mary-Kay Wilmers … was one of the founders of the literary magazine in 1979, along with Karl Miller and Susannah Clapp, became co-editor in 1988, and has been its sole editor since 1992. In 2019, when the LRB celebrated its 40th anniversary, she was dubbed 'Britain's most influential editor' by the New York Times." - The Guardian
"The Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction includes some 1,800 separate entries, from actifan and aerocar to zero-gravity and zine. … A historical dictionary devoted to the history of something as future-oriented (and imaginary) as science fiction may seem like a contradiction in terms. But then science fiction has always had a curious relationship to the real world, said Jesse...
"In many ways, the Book Review’s history is that of American letters, and we’ll be using our 125th anniversary this year to celebrate and examine that history over the coming months. In essays, photo stories, timelines and other formats, we’ll highlight the books and authors that made it all possible." - The New York Times
For two months, many thousands of farmers have been staging a massive sit-in with their tractors on the highways around New Delhi, demanding that the Indian government withdraw a package of agriculture laws that the farmers say will slash their income and make them prey to Big Agribusiness. And some of these farmworkers, with sympathetic writers and artists, have...
"There are some in the industry who believe houses have a responsibility to publish a wide range of viewpoints, seeing it as a First Amendment issue." (And conservative books have tended to sell well.) "But a burgeoning group of mostly younger industry members argue" — especially in the wake of the Capitol riot and Simon & Schuster's subsequent cancellation...
Jodi Archambault: "As COVID-19 takes a fearsome toll on our people, it also threatens the progress we have made to save our languages. The average age of our speakers — our treasured elders who have the greatest knowledge and depth of the language — is 70. They are also those who are at most risk of dying from COVID-19."...
