Literature

March 9, 2022, 2:43pm In March 2020, I happened to be working at a library for the first time (shoutout to my friends at BPL), and got to witness up-close how quickly the staff pivoted their services to respond to the pandemic: shifting programming online and expanding their virtual presence; starting a delivery service for

Of all of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s shorter works, ‘The Diamond as Big as the Ritz’ is perhaps the most celebrated and widely studied. Published in 1922, ‘The Diamond as Big as the Ritz’ appears to foreshadow a number of prominent elements of Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, published three years later. The story tells of

‘The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber’ is a popular Ernest Hemingway story with a decidedly atypical un-Hemingwayesque protagonist. First published in Cosmopolitan magazine in 1936, ‘The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber’ is about a married American couple on safari in Africa with their English guide. The husband has a failure of nerve when

‘The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World’ is a short story by the Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez, published in his 1972 collection Leaf Storm and Other Stories. A story about acceptance, community, and honouring the dead, ‘The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World’ is one of Márquez’ most powerful stories. Before we offer an

‘Two Kinds’ is a short story by the American author Amy Tan (born 1952), published as part of her book The Joy Luck Club in 1989. The story is about a young American girl born to Chinese parents; her mother pushes her to become a child prodigy, but the daughter resists. A powerful tale about

Poetry can be used to address and explore a range of pressing social issues, and racial prejudice and racial identity are among these topics which poets have written about powerfully, from a range of perspectives. Whether it’s African-American poets writing at the time of the Civil Rights movement in the US, or British Asian poets

An unspoken tradition hints that going to the source is good for the story you want to write. The trouble often is that we have no idea what that source may be. Sometimes we think it is sheer research and we spend time in libraries. Often, we think it’s where the action of the proposed

I left Iran for the first time at the age of thirteen to continue my education in England, and, ever since, books and stories have been my talismans, my portable home, the only home I could rely on, the only home I knew would never betray me, the only home I could never be forced

My journey to Ukraine might just have started with its most famous dish, bortsch. I ate plenty of it as a child in my second home country, Estonia, a place that has much more in common with Ukraine than its earthly cuisine and shared pickling expertise. Both of them were behind the Iron Curtain before

Maybe it has happened to you: a stranger catches your eye while you peruse the plant identification section of the library, or wander a mossy hillock speckled with Amanita bisporigera, or shuffle along in the funeral procession for your wealthy Aunt Tabitha. The look squeezes a secret place inside you, sets your heart racing—in fear

The following is excerpted from Andrey Kurkov’s new novel Grey Bees, translated by Boris Dralyuk. Born near Leningrad in 1961, Andrey Kurkov was a journalist, prison warder, cameraman and screenplay-writer before he became well known as a novelist. He received “hundreds of rejections” and was a pioneer of self-publishing, selling more than75,000 copies of his

TODAY: In 1913, 31-year-old writer Virginia Woolf delivers the manuscript of her first novel, The Voyage Out, to her publisher.    Sofi Oksanen recommends reading about the Soviet past to understand Ukraine’s present. | Lit Hub Ukraine What makes a great opening line? Allegra Hyde looks to Toni Morrison, Nell Zink, Jenny Zhang, and others

March 9, 2022, 9:45am Details (screenshot below) of an announcement slated for today were revealed on Twitter last night, and were confirmed by Conjunctions founder and editor Bradford Morrow: Bard College is going to cease funding the legendary literary journal at the end of this calendar year. Not only has Conjunctions published the likes of

March 9, 2022, 11:27am New map just dropped: check out a new and improved view of the London Underground, courtesy of authors Reni Eddo-Lodge and Rebecca Solnit, who worked with Emma Watson to create a visual homage to the women who shaped British history and culture. The City of Women London map renames each station

March 9, 2022, 12:13pm Colson Whitehead announced via Twitter that his new novel, Crook Manifesto, will be published in Summer 2023. Summer 2023 pic.twitter.com/Q10AhjZxex — colson whitehead (@colsonwhitehead) March 8, 2022 “The novel follows Ray Carney in New York City in the 1970s. Pepper returns as well, and other folks,” says Whitehead. For everyone who

March 9, 2022, 12:15pm The times they are a-changin’: Bob Dylan’s first book in eighteen years is coming out this November via Simon & Schuster. It will be Dylan’s first published book since winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016. According to Simon & Schuster, The Philosophy of Modern Song is a “masterclass on