"For generations, through wars, crisis, and political upheaval, documentary poets have helped make sense of some of our most difficult moments – by expressing what might otherwise be impossible to say. So what are they writing about today?" (audio) - To the Best of Our Knowledge
In contrast to the prominent dictionaries that designated as their word of the year “rizz,” “hallucinate” and “authentic,” the American Dialect Society celebrates linguistic variation to an almost absurd degree.
"Eggers's The Eyes & the Impossible, the great adventure of a very fast dog, has received the John Newbery Medal for the year’s best children’s book. … The Randolph Caldecott Medal for outstanding illustration was given to Vashti Harrison’s Big, … (which) was a National Book Award finalist." - AP
As Ashley Elston "approaches the end of her first draft, pulls a six-foot sheet of brown butcher paper from a roll on a specially installed rod near her desk. This two-yard stretch then becomes a playing field." - The New York Times
The best children's books aren't meant for teaching, and "aren’t advertisements for anything—not even the important things. They’re an advertisement for reading itself; for the entertainment value of the world itself." - The Paris Review
This time it's Sports Illustrated, which had been gutted but not completely demolished. The layoffs of what may be the entire staff "come after Sports Illustrated’s owner, Authentic Brands Group, revoked another company’s publishing license." - Los Angeles Times
"Prague doesn’t want to be put into anyone’s story; so many people have come and tried to make it part of this or that empire, and it hasn’t worked. ... I felt almost at my limit with how much and how rapidly I was inventing." - The Guardian (UK)
Rie Kudan "won the prestigious Akutagawa Prize this week for her sci-fi novel Tokyo-to Dojo-to (Tokyo Sympathy Tower), which centers around a high-rise prison tower and contains themes surrounding AI." The reaction to her news has not been positive. - Vice
Myriad factors influence variations among American accents and dialects, including waves of settlement in a region, geographic location and class differences. - Smithsonian
"A three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit — viewed by many as the most conservative court in the nation — ... upheld a lower court decision to block key provisions of HB 900, Texas’s controversial book rating law, finding that the law likely violated First Amendment protections against compelled speech." - Publishers Weekly
The philosopher Peter Carruthers, who has written a fair amount, and variously, about inner speech, has argued that inner speech may have specifically arisen in evolution to enable the rehearsal and evaluation of overt speech actions. - 3 Quarks Daily
One of the pseudonyms is believed to be E. H. Gould, including a story about her house in Concord, Massachusetts, and a ghost story along the lines of the Charles Dickens classic “A Christmas Carol.” - AP
Yes, the Central Intelligence Agency has a creative writing group for staffers; it's called Invisible Ink. Johannes Lichtman recounts his visit there, including his confusing, disorienting arrival at headquarters. - The Paris Review
