Writers can get ideas from the strangest of places. Omelas, the distinctive-sounding but entirely fictional city in Ursula K. Le Guin’s 1973 short story ‘The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas’, came from her reading a road sign for Salem, Oregon, (‘Salem, O.’) in her car’s rear-view mirror. But the idea behind the story came
Literature
TODAY: In 1924, South African novelist Alex La Guma is born. Emily Temple recommends 50 classic novels under 200 pages—because what is an attention span and where can we buy one? | Lit Hub Reading Lists “Am I prepared? Is anyone, ever?” Oncology nurse Nina Solis reflects on turning to Mary Oliver as she watches her first patient
February 19, 2021, 3:19pm If you’re like me, the millions of dollars you set aside for travel and leisure in 2020/2021 are now burning a hole in your pocket. These days, it feels like there’s little for a twenty-first century robber baron to spend his vast fortune on but shortened stocks, surreptitious trips to Cancún,
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle analyses Wordsworth’s famous line about poetry and ‘spontaneous overflow’ 1798 was the key year for Romantic poetry in Britain, for it saw the publication of the Lyrical Ballads, a collection of poems by the two brightest new stars in English verse: William Wordsworth and
February 19, 2021, 2:09pm I have always been an outsider at Winter Institute, the American Booksellers Association’s annual conference—and yet I love it so. Having only attended four of the last six I am a relative newcomer compared to many of the legendary booksellers who’ve been attending for decades. I’m thinking here of the likes
On this day, 90 years ago, the great Toni Morrison was born; and in a span of 88 years, she not only managed to publish 11 groundbreaking novels, which earned her a Pulitzer and Nobel Prize, but also championed some of the most enduring Black literary voices of our time. To celebrate her birthday, I
Greek and Roman mythology has been a constant source of inspiration for poets down the centuries. Whether it’s tragic figures or love stories, or tales of magic and the supernatural, classical myths have retained their power down the millennia, and poets have often made use of these memorable tales when writing everything from love lyrics
February 18, 2021, 1:54pm New Turing test just dropped: The first play written entirely by a robot. AI: When A Robot Writes A Play, will be performed at Czech Centre London on February 26., and will be followed by a debate with both theater and artificial intelligence experts. Czech Centre London created the project in
In Greek mythology and literature, Tiresias was a seer or soothsayer. In other words, he was a prophet. How he attained the gift of prophecy, however, is a curious one, and worth exploring, so in this post we’re going to take a look at the myths surrounding the figure of Tiresias, and his role in
February 16, 2021, 3:09pm This weekend, while agonizing over yet another dismal showing from my favorite Premier League team (you’ll never walk alone . . . but honestly), I heard a rumor about Albert Camus: that once upon a time, the extremely French writer and philosopher played keeper for the Racing Universitaire Algerios (RUA) junior
Six Characters in Search of an Author is one of the most famous plays about theatre, a metatheatrical masterpiece which invites us to think about the relationship between theatre and ‘real’ life. Luigi Pirandello’s most celebrated and widely staged play, Six Characters in Search of an Author is worth exploring more closely; but before we
February 16, 2021, 1:25pm For all the fake news fearmongering of the last four years, we’re still very susceptible to myths presented as fact when they’re deployed with authority. Last week saw the viral Facebook resurgence of a popular tweet from 2018 which claimed that in the event of a fire, all the oxygen is
P&P Live! Jed Rakoff | Why The Innocent Plead Guilty and the Guilty Go FreeMonday, February 15th, 6:00pm ESTPolitics and Prose welcomes senior federal judge Jed Rakoff to present his new book, Why the Innocent Plead Guilty and the Guilty Go Free and Other Paradoxes of Our Broken Legal System, in conversation with NYU Law
‘Lines Written near Richmond, upon the Thames, at Evening’ is a poem by William Wordsworth (1770-1850) which appeared in his 1798 collection Lyrical Ballads, the book he co-authored with his fellow Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Although not one of the more famous poems from that collection, it deserves close analysis because it contains a
February 12, 2021, 9:30am Love, for all its infinite variety, has not changed so very much over the centuries. From ecstasy to anguish, it is a universal experience that has been expressed countless times in the great love stories and poetry. Recently, I have had the pleasure of sorting through loves both ancient and modern
February 12, 2021, 12:34pm Utah is making headlines again, and not because of a Mormon-related scandal, Mitt Romney, or the latest episode of The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City (which, by the way, is a delightful circus of megalomanic #girlbosses who wear frozen Instagram faces, and my new guilty pleasure). No, this time they’re
Edmund Spenser (c. 1552-99) is one of the greatest of the Elizabethan poets. When he died in 1599 and was interred in Westminster Abbey, alongside his hero Geoffrey Chaucer, it’s rumoured that Shakespeare may have been among the mourners tossing poems into his grave. Spenser left behind a sonnet sequence, a half-finished epic poem, and
February 12, 2021, 10:24am “There could be weeks when nothing goes right.” So says 45-year-old typecaster—and last of a dwindling breed—Brian Ferret about his unlikely vocation. Brian handcrafts metal type, one by one, at Arion Press, using antique machinery to squeeze out a mix of hot lead, tin, and antimony into tiny beautiful letters. Everyone