Much of the landscape of North America was new to the English, so many early word inventions applied to the natural world. Often these simply combined a noun with an adjective: backcountry, backwoods (and backwoodsman), back settlement, pine barrens, canebrake, salt lick, foothill, underbrush, bottomland, cold snap. - Lapham's Quarterly
In addition to rising costs, topics discussed at the daylong conference included the renewed postpandemic threat of work moving off-shore, sustainability concerns, the shift from offset to digital printing, and labor shortages. - Publishers Weekly
Writers have to ask themselves if they're "willing to sell their creative souls for the convenience of a hand clap ... to take the easy-lazy path that requires no deep investigation, no deep learning, where you drive up, place your order, and pick up a short story to go." - Salon
When the essay, called “Ghosts,” came out in The Believer in the summer of 2021, it quickly went viral. I started hearing from others who had lost loved ones and felt that the piece captured grief better than anything they’d ever read. - Wired
"Libraries will also operate with reduced opening hours. The service said the funding situation is presenting 'significant challenges', and that the board's decision to reduce operating hours was not taken lightly." - The Guardian
As the new school year begins, parents of public school students in Miami have become more engaged than ever in resisting the mandate of the DeSantis administration. - The Guardian
Susie Dent "is on a mission to revive English’s lost positives' – words such as 'feckful,' 'couth,' ruly' and 'full of gorm.' In modern English, they survive only in their negative forms, but once, we aspired to be ruthful (full of compassion) or ept." - The Guardian (UK)
Literary feuds were a regular and entertaining occurrence in the British literary scene. When writers argued, the reading public looked on with the grin of schadenfreude. We all know the canonical examples. John le Carré and Salman Rushdie’s 1997 shouting match in the letters section of The Guardian. - The Critic
"A string of job postings from high-profile training data companies, such as Scale AI and Appen, are recruiting poets, novelists, playwrights, or writers with a PhD or master’s degree. Dozens more seek general annotators with humanities degrees, or years of work experience in literary fields." - Rest of World
"Bookstore owners and staffers agreed that TikTok increases their visibility when they make a concerted effort to use it. … Though it's time-consuming to monitor and to apply tags and trending sounds strategically, those contacted for this article said sustained engagement is worthwhile." - Publishers Weekly
The library was founded in 1799 and counts itself as the second oldest in the state. It is separate from county government even though it relies on $1 million annually from Warren County to supply 75% of its budget. - AP News
