April 18, 2022, 12:28pm Some sad news coming out of the Boston area today: the Children’s Book Shop in Brookline Village, Mass., will close its doors after 45 years. Dear Customers: We are sad to report that The Children’s Book Shop will close its doors on April 30, 2022. We have provided good books, great
Literature
The law enforcement officials and terrorism experts interviewed on cable news in the hours after the attack oozed authority. The marathon bombers, they said, could be halfway down the eastern seaboard by nightfall. At my wife’s workplace the next day—a research lab on an Air Force base outside Boston—talk turned to 9/11 and how the
‘The Leader of the People’ is a short story by John Steinbeck (1902-68), the final instalment in the longer work The Red Pony. The story is about the son of a ranch owner who looks forward to a visit from his grandfather, the titular ‘leader of the people’ who enjoys regaling people with tales of
TODAY: In 1925, Vladimir Nabokov marries Vera Slonim in Berlin. A poisonous trespass: How a group of concerned citizens started the fight against DDT. | Lit Hub Nature “American culture feeds upon lost people. What we hold are grudges and guns.” Steve Edwards considers violence, agency, and what a teacher can do. | Lit
April 15, 2022, 11:05am Like we needed another reason to love libraries: with book bans ramping up in school systems around the country, the Brooklyn Public Library is taking steps to make its massive catalog available to as many young people as possible. Right now, and for a “limited time,” anyone in the United States
‘The Philosophy of Composition’ is an 1846 essay by Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49). Although he wrote the essay in order to explain how he came to write his hugely successful poem ‘The Raven’, it has become a key non-fiction work – probably the key work – produced by Poe, and an important document in helping
TODAY: In 1962, Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook is published. “The state of ‘nature,’ like the state of the global climate, can no longer be appreciated from a distance, and its literature can no longer be confined to a single shelf.” Michelle Nijhuis reframes a genre. | Lit Hub Nature Elizabeth Alexander considers the high stakes of textbooks. |
April 15, 2022, 2:57pm Dame Emma Thompson was born in Paddington, London, 63 years ago today. Let’s celebrate by making it an Emma Thompson weekend and stream some of her best literary roles, presented here in order of appearance, because how could I possibly rank them? [embedded content] Much Ado About NothingLiterary bonafides: Shakespeare!Stream it
‘I, Being Born a Woman and Distressed’ is a 1923 poem by the American poet Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950). The poem is a love poem, although not a conventional one. The form of the poem is also a curious choice given Millay’s subject-matter. Before we offer an analysis of ‘I, Being Born a Woman
By Jonny Diamond April 15, 2022, 12:00pm As someone who works in the, ahem, literary media, I have to tip my professional cap to Boris Kachka and everyone involved in putting together this endlessly clickable tour through bookish life in Los Angeles, called “Lit City.” From the best bookstores to the coolest micro literary scenes to the
April 14, 2022, 1:34pm The New York Public Library has announced the finalists for its twenty-second annual Young Lions Fiction Award, which is given each year to an American writer age 35 or younger for either a novel or a collection of short stories. The finalists are selected by a committee of writers, editors, and
‘An Elopement’ is a short story by the American writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935), first published in the San Francisco Call in July 1893. Running to just a few pages, ‘An Elopement’ is about a young woman who disappears from the small town where she lived with her mother and aunt, and is believed to
April 14, 2022, 1:37pm It’s been a banner season for scammers! From Inventing Anna and The Dropout to The Tinder Swindler and Bad Vegan, there is certainly no shortage of these off-the-wall stories with twists and turns so unexpected that they could only come from real life. You just can’t make this stuff up! Except that
April 13, 2022, 9:11pm Tonight, The Story Prize announced that the 2021 winner is Brandon Taylor for Filthy Animals. The Story Prize’s $20,000 top prize is among the largest first-prize amounts of any annual U.S. book award for fiction. Now in it’s 18th year, The Story Prize annually honors the author of an outstanding collection
Literature is full of monsters whose names and appearance have passed into general circulation: we all recognise Frankenstein (even if, as pedants will be quick to point out, Hollywood has made us confuse the ‘monster’ with his creator), Dracula, and the Minotaur, among many others. But what are the best stories about monsters, whether short
April 13, 2022, 11:03am The National Book Foundation has released its annual list of the “5 Under 35,” a group of five fiction writers under the age of 35 “whose debut work promises to leave a lasting impression on the literary landscape.” Each winner was chosen by a judge who has won a National Book
April 12, 2022, 2:37pm Today, the New York Public Library’s Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers announced its new class of fellows, selected from a pool of 356 applicants from 37 countries. The class of 2022 includes: · Academics Daphne A. Brooks, Margaret Kelleher, Neil Maher, Sarah Maza, Maurice Samuels, and Erin
‘A Report to an Academy’ is a short story by Franz Kafka (1883-1924), written in March and April 1917. The story takes the form of a speech delivered by a former ape who has learned to mimic human actions and speech, and who is reporting his life and experiences to a group of academics, hence