ArtsJournal: Arts, Culture, Ideas

WORDS

The American Booksellers Association Canceled Itself

The ABA took its Twitter private after promoting a scientifically inaccurate anti-trans book to indie bookstores, apologizing, and then deleting the apology. - LitHub

The Authors And Magazines Shaping Africa’s Literary Culture

"Across Africa, literary journals managed by young writers and artists are emerging with the aim of publishing both new and established voices, collaborating across geographies." - The New York Times

The Author Of Podcast-Length Poems Says Poetry Isn’t Seen As Masculine

Another wordsmith adds, "Satire, acting or any kind of putting yourself out there isn’t viewed as the most macho thing." - The Guardian (UK)

Hong Kong Book Fair Slims Down With Self-Censorship

This year, far fewer politically sensitive books are on display. Vendors are curating their books carefully to avoid violating the national security law, which Beijing imposed on Hong Kong in June 2020. - The Guardian

Translating The Vocabulary Of The Online World From English

Speakers of other languages often have to use English for internet-specific terms; digital rights advocates find that there are no words in many other languages for things like data protection and surveillance. Here one activist writes about why and how she's working to change that. - The Nation

We Need Literature To Tell Untold Stories. But When Is It Appropriation?

How can writers tell and translate stories about marginalized groups without exploitation or appropriation? - Metropolitan (Japan)

Knopf Names Sonny Mehta’s Successor As Editor In Chief

Arguably the most prestigious division of the Penguin Random House conglomerate, Knopf has been without a leader since Mehta, who held the job for 32 years, died in late 2019. The new boss is Jordan Pavlin, whose current title at Knopf is editorial director. - The New York Times

The Serendipity Of Almanacs

Almanacs are an anomaly in the 2021 literary landscape, a choose-your-own adventure of print culture. So much of reading, especially online, is about seeking: looking for a fact, an image, a bit of information. - Los Angeles Review of Books

What Happens If An Archivist Sneezes On A Centuries-Old Manuscript?

First, for God's sake, he shouldn't wipe it off himself. (This lesson was learned the hard way.) Beyond that, there are ways of repairing the damage, or at least keeping it from getting worse. - The Atlantic

What Jerry Saltz’s Rejection Of Substack Really Means

"Some more enterprising major-media columnists sometimes compare Substack to the broadsheets of journalism’s early decades in the 1800s, though they do this, invariably, as a means of dismissing digital newsletters as retrograde." - Seth Abramson

The Man Who Saved The Slovenian Language

Over six centuries in the Habsburg empire and most of another in Yugoslavia, the tongue of this tiny Alpine land might well have faded away. But one dedicated (or obsessive) 18th-century priest/author/publisher led the effort to mold a bunch of hillbilly dialects into a serious language. - Atlas Obscura

Today’s Newsletter Boom – A New Literary Genre?

The first-person informality that has been present since the earliest days of web writing achieves its business apotheosis in the newsletter: from personal essay to personal brand. - New York Magazine

Turns Out Everything We ‘Knew’ About Kids And Reading Was Wrong

For instance, boys like fiction just as much as girls do. And developing brains need stories - that is, fiction - in order to grow. - LitHub

The Language That Poetry Shares With Comic Books

Eve Ewing, multihyphenate creative person (and sociology prof), calls writing poetry and writing comic books her most meaningful "cross-pollination." - The New York Times

Men Still Don’t Read Women

This remains true, with big financial and other consequences: "Why does this matter? For a start, it narrows men’s experiences of the world." - The Guardian (UK)

Our Free Newsletter

Join our 30,000 subscribers

Latest

Don't Miss

function my_excerpt_length($length){ return 200; } add_filter('excerpt_length', 'my_excerpt_length');