The following is from Claire Jiménez’s What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez. Jiménez is the author of the short story collection Staten Island Stories. She received her MFA from Vanderbilt University and her PhD from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. In 2020, she cofounded the Puerto Rican Literature Project, a digital archive. Currently she is an Assistant
Literature
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘The Gift of the Magi’ is, along with ‘The Last Leaf’, O. Henry’s best-known and most widely studied short story. This 1906 story is also a classic Christmas story, as the title suggests. The story explores a number of ‘big’ themes, and these are worth exploring in more detail
TODAY: In 1929, author and Feminist Press founder Florence Howe is born. Also on Lit Hub: Kate DiCamillo on seeing The Magician’s Elephant adapted for film • Idra Novey on conjuring haunting characters • Read from Claire Jiménez’s debut novel, What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) Concrete poetry is a curious phenomenon. Rather than simply using words to suggest a particular visual concept or image, the words of the poem are arranged on the page in such a way that they resemble the shape of the thing they describe. Although the term ‘concrete poetry’ is
TODAY: In 1898, Matilda Joslyn Gage dies at 71. Ursula K. Le Guin’s son and literary executor, Theo Downes-Le Guin, reflects on why he decided to update language in her children’s books—and the note she left that guided his decision. | Lit Hub A more interesting autofiction: DK Nnuro examines how Black writers are “appropriating” their way into
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘The Cask of Amontillado’ is, in some ways, the quintessential Edgar Allan Poe story. It distils the essence of his most recurrent themes: revenge, murder, guilt, and live burial, to name but a few. But Poe’s story also takes in a number of other, less obvious themes: the difference
March 17, 2023, 10:00am Lit Hub is pleased to share the cover for K-Ming Chang’ new novel, Organ Meats, which will be published by One World in October. Here’s a bit about the book from the publisher: Best friends Anita and Rainie have made countless visits to their home base: an old sycamore tree and
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) Langston Hughes (1901-67) was a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance in New York in the 1920s. A prolific writer, he was a novelist, playwright, social activist, and journalist, among many other things (he even wrote a musical). In his poetry, he took his inspiration from Walt Whitman, Paul
I’ll get this out of the way now: Lucky Hank, the new academic satire series on AMC, is based on Richard Russo’s 1997 novel Straight Man, and no, it doesn’t really follow the book. I mean, it still follows the misadventures of William Henry Devereaux Jr, or “Hank,” a one-hit-wonder novelist and the chair of the
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘Mary on a Cross’ is a song by the Swedish rock band Ghost. The song appeared on the band’s 2019 EP Seven Inches of Satanic Panic, and has become their most popular – and perhaps the most intriguing – song. People have been scratching their heads over the meaning
March 16, 2023, 9:30am At Point Break Live, they give the people sitting in the front few rows raincoats to wear. I mention it because reviews of the stage adaptation of Hanya Yanigahara’s bestseller A Little Life make it sound both emotionally wrenching and also quite violent. Might want to protect your theater outfit. The
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī, who is popularly known simply as Rumi (1207-73), is one of the most popular poets in the world. Eight centuries after he lived and wrote, his words continue to strike a chord with readers from many countries who enjoy his works in numerous languages. Part
March 16, 2023, 11:10am Fans of Ling Ma’s Severence, rejoice: Ling Ma’s Bliss Montage: Stories, her second book, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, last night won The Story Prize, which comes with a $20,000 purse. The judges praised Ma’s achievements in the short story collection: Despite this blend and the often comical situations Ma’s
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) The limerick is not the most ‘literary’ of forms, and unlike those other brief verse forms, the tanka and the haiku, it has never been welcomed into the hallowed halls of Great Poetry. But it is a form enjoyed by many people, some of whom perhaps have no time
March 15, 2023, 2:45pm Yep, that’s right—not NFTs! Shocking, I know. According to a Forbes Advisor analysis, based on data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and Google Trends, bookstores are projected to be the most recession-proof type of U.S. business in 2023, followed by PR firms, interior design services, staffing agencies, and marketing
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘She Unnames Them’ is a short story by the American writer Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2018), published in the New Yorker in 1985. The story, which runs to just a couple of pages, can best be described as a piece of flash fiction or micro-fiction. ‘She Unnames Them’ is
March 15, 2023, 12:14pm In FBI documents recently acquired by Unicorn Riot, a left-leaning independent media outlet, Chicago’s worker-owned Pilsen Community Books was said to be a meeting place for “anarchist violent extremists, or ‘AVEs,’ environmental violent extremists, or ‘EVEs’ and pro-abortion extremists.” As worker-owner Mandy Medley told Unicorn Riot, though: We’re open to the
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) In a short life beset by ill health, the American writer Flannery O’Connor (1925-64) wrote two novels, Wise Blood (1952) and The Violent Bear It Away (1960). But it is for her short stories, many of which were collected in just two volumes, that she is best-known. A Good