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
Literature
‘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
April 12, 2022, 12:30pm Cafés can be lovely places to grab a coffee and a snack while you noodle around with your writing project, but the thing they’ve long been missing is cold, hard accountability. Well, no more, thanks to The Manuscript Writing Cafe! The Tokyo café was designed to help writers trying to hit
April 11, 2022, 12:36pm The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation recently announced the recipients of its 2022 fellowships, chosen through a peer-review process from nearly 2,500 applicants. Of the 180 recipients—“these successful applicants were appointed on the basis of prior achievement and exceptional promise”—25 were awarded to fiction writers, nonfiction writers, and poets. Congratulations to
‘The Hollow Men’ is a poem which succeeds in part because of its suggestive symbolism. T. S. Eliot uses a tight and interrelated group of symbols, including deserts, rats, twilight, fading stars, and the hollow/stuffed men themselves, to summon a decaying civilisation, usually interpreted as representing Europe after the end of the First World War.
April 11, 2022, 10:24am Does the following really sound like contemporary American conservatism to you? Dawn of the Brave, which is aimed at children age 6 to 10, helps readers recognize that everyone has strengths and weakness, but teamwork allows people to come together for the greater good. I am… confused. Dawn of the Brave,