Literature

TODAY: In 1891, Kate Roberts was one of the foremost Welsh-language authors of the 20th century, is born. “Still, the best, most generative conversations mostly happen out of the public eye.” Wayne Miller on the hazards of talking poetry on social media. | Lit Hub As Gabriel Byrne watches his father’s decline, he wonders if it’s ever

‘The Machine Stops’ (1909) is probably E. M. Forster’s best-known short story. The story’s influence can arguably be seen on George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, and Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror. Like many other dystopian stories, Forster’s has gone on to influence popular culture in numerous fields (the pop group Level 42 even

Featured above: As US Capitol police clear the premises of rioters, a sign concedes President-elect Biden won the election, but wants the results overturned. All photos by Rachel Cobb. * January 6, 2021: A group tries to force their way into the east entrance of the Capitol.* Rioters use stolen police shields, flag poles, and

February 12, 2021, 1:38pm “I have all my life been far from being an admirer,” wrote Thomas Bernhard in his novel Old Masters: A Comedy. “Nothing repels me more than observing people in the act of admiration, people infected with some admiration.” As in art was it in life: the controversial satirical playwright, poet and

In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle explores the meaning of Hamlet’s famous quotation ‘A little more than kin …’ ‘A little more than kin, and less than kind’ is a famous quotation from William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet. But as ‘a little more than kin, and less than kind’ is a

February 12, 2021, 11:25am Chicago’s only Black woman-owned bookstore opened in the summer of 2019. Over the past two years, Semicolon has served as a vital and vibrant cultural hub and gallery space. Last summer, as the coronavirus began to tear through our country and small businesses had to close their doors, Semicolon owner DL

February 11, 2021, 2:22pm Exciting news! The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library is currently in the process of digitizing the Walter O. Evans Collection of Frederick Douglass and Douglass Family Papers. The collection will be fully digitized for public access by the end of February. The Yale Daily News advises that once the collection

Poetry is something that people often turn to for relaxation, and poets have frequently sought out calm, rest, and tranquillity so they can find inspiration for their poetry, or find time to think and write. For William Wordsworth, poetry was ‘emotion recollected in tranquillity’. Below, we introduce ten of the very best poems about rest

February 11, 2021, 10:03am This morning, Reagan Arthur, Executive Vice President and Publisher of Knopf, announced Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s next book, Notes on Grief. The book, which Knopf will publish on May 11 of this year, is an expansion of her essay of the same title, which was published last September in The New Yorker. “This

February 10, 2021, 12:59pm On October 5, this timeline will be blessed/cursed by Jonathan Franzen’s first novel since 2015: Crossroads, or, if you’re not abbreviating, Crossroads: A Novel: A Key to All Mythologies, Volume 1. It’s the first novel of a trilogy, A Key to All Mythologies, which, yes, nods to the doomed scholarly project

Why do we have summer and winter? Although we now have a much fuller understanding of how the orbit of the Earth around the Sun creates the various seasons of spring, summer, autumn, and winter, our ancient ancestors did not have that detailed scientific knowledge. For the ancient Greeks, it was thanks to Persephone, the

February 10, 2021, 11:43am Today, PEN America announced the finalists for its 2021 Literary Awards, which recognizes and honors “dynamic, imaginative, and thought-provoking” books published in the last year. Previous winners include Nafissa Thompson-Spires, Imani Perry, and Yiyun Li. The 55 finalists were selected across 11 categories—PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, Open Book Award, Prize for

February 9, 2021, 4:03pm Beloved Mexican-American actor and restauranteur Danny Trejo’s first memoir, Trejo: My Life of Crime, Redemption, and Hollywood—which details Trejo’s path from drug addiction and incarceration in some of America’s most notorious prisons (including San Quentin, Folsom, and Soledad), to unexpected Hollywood fame in his 40s—will be released by Atria Books on July

The Picture of Dorian Gray is Oscar Wilde’s one novel, published originally in 1890 (as a serial) and then in book form the following year. The novel is at once an example of late Victorian Gothic horror and, in some ways, the greatest English-language novel about decadence and aestheticism, or ‘art for art’s sake’. To

February 9, 2021, 11:26am As we all know, the worst thing to happen to mainstream American cinema in the 21st century was the near-total abandonment of that most compelling and enigmatic of subgenres: the erotic thriller. While there have been a few notable additions to the canon over the past two decades (In the Cut,

February 8, 2021, 12:27pm The latest TikTok trend is surprisingly old-school: it’s a book. Last week, Sherry Argov’s 2002 relationship guide Why Men Love Bitches: From Doormat to Dreamgirl—A Woman’s Guide to Holding Her Own in a Relationship made the Sunday Times bestseller list for the first time since its release nearly a decade ago, thanks

Act 2 Scene 3 of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth is often known as ‘the Porter scene’. The Porter, the one comic turn in an otherwise overwhelmingly dark and violent play, dominates the scene, as well as making reference to the most momentous event of 1605, the shock of which would have been fresh in the minds

February 8, 2021, 10:12am Last night, as you may or may not know if you’re reading this space, was the Super Bowl. As you probably do know, this year was the first time the Super Bowl included a poetry performance—and of course, it was America’s newest literary darling Amanda Gorman. Gorman, who recently became the