TODAY: In 1896, Floridian author Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings is born. POV shifts and moral dilemmas on Red Headed Stranger: Odie Lindsey on learning to write from Willie Nelson and one of the greatest albums of the 1970s. | Lit Hub Craft Maya Alexandri on navigating the dual nightmare of an opioid epidemic and a global pandemic as an EMT. | Lit
Literature
August 7, 2020, 1:04pm This week, a reader broke the usual flow of publicity announcements and pitches in our general inbox to ask: Are we okay? “Increasingly a lot of the links I have selected in the past couple of weeks I find very distressing,” they wrote. (Fair.) They also asked if we could recommend
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle revels in a classic cat poem written by a man in confinement Who invented ‘free verse’? Walt Whitman (1819-92) often gets the credit, although his decision to write in free verse – unrhymed poetry without a regular metre or rhythm – may have been
August 7, 2020, 11:14am Raven Leilani’s Luster, Akwaeke Emezi’s The Death of Vivek Oji, Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste, and Jonathan C. Slaght’s Owls of the Eastern Ice all feature among Book Marks’ Best Reviewed Books of the Week. Fiction 1. Luster by Raven Leilani 6 Rave • 6 Positive • 1 Mixed “… vibrant, spiky …
August 6, 2020, 3:59pm Another day, another announcement of a memoir from a former Trump collaborator. This time, it’s Fiona Hill, an ex-advisor who testified in Trump’s impeachment inquiry, whose “views about the future of a polarized America” will be published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2021. I have nothing more to say about these books,
August 6, 2020, 8:49am Phew. I know, you were all waiting on us, right? Especially you, Oprah. Oprah definitely cares what we think. Well, good news everybody: the official position of Literary Hub is that Oprah’s latest book club pick, Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste, is a knockout choice. “Of all the books I’ve chosen for book club
Henry V is one of Shakespeare’s most popular and widely studied history plays; indeed, along with Richard III, it is perhaps the best-known. But critics are divided over how we should view Henry V the play – and Henry V the character. Before we offer an analysis of the play, it might be worth briefly
August 5, 2020, 10:00am Nick Miller, Nick Miller. By day, he’s a cranky bartender at a failing establishment. By night, he’s the author of Z is for Zombie and, most notably, The Pepperwood Chronicles. He’s hands-down one of the greatest fictional writers of our time. But what makes Nick Miller such a treasure? He’s lazy.
August 4, 2020, 3:24pm Welcome to the Book Marks Questionnaire, where we ask authors questions about the books that have shaped them. This week, we spoke to The Night Circus and The Starless Sea author Erin Morgenstern * Book Marks: What book do you think your book is most in conversation with? Erin Morgenstern: The Ten Thousand
August 4, 2020, 10:45am Please watch this video of Curbside Larry from the Barbara Bush Public Library in Harris County, Texas as he takes us through a dizzying tour of all the library has to offer you, the fine member of the reading public, in these dark dark times: “Shelves and shelves of books!!” Great!
On this episode of Personal Space: The Memoir Show, Sari Botton interviews Morgan Jerkins, author of Wandering in Strange Lands: A Daughter of the Great Migration Reclaims Her Roots, published by Harper. In this fascinating historical memoir, Jerkins explores her identity and heritage by tracing her ancestors’ paths out of the south during “The Great
‘The Next War’ is a relatively little-known Wilfred Owen poem: compared with his great sonnet ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’, this sonnet is practically invisible to all but the most diehard fans of Wilfred Owen or war poetry. Yet this poem offers an interesting insight into Owen’s work. Before we offer an analysis of ‘The Next
The following is excerpted from Stephen Kiernan’s new novel, Universe of Two. Kiernan has won numerous awards, including the Brechner Center’s Freedom of Information Award, the Scripps Howard Award for Distinguished Service to the First Amendment, and the George Polk Award. He is the author of two previous novels, The Curiosity and The Hummingbird, and
Trump’s tweet from Thursday should concern all Americans, regardless of political affiliation. We have never had a delayed presidential election in our history—not during the Civil War, not during the Second World War. The fact that Trump lacks the power to delay an election—only Congress could do that—provides cold comfort. The very idea that he
TODAY: In 2012, Gore Vidal dies. “Trump’s refusal to accept defeat is not possible or even probable—it is all but inevitable.” Lawrence Douglas on the crisis that looms in November. | Lit Hub Politics Omar Mouallem’s pandemic project? Becoming the fake dean of a fake university. | Lit Hub “Confession: I still cry at work. I’m
July 31, 2020, 9:12am Gore Vidal—essayist, historian, novelist, public intellectual, and Norman Mailer antagonist (Mailer headbutted him backstage at the Dick Cavett Show over a piece in the NYRB in which Vidal compared Mailer’s views of women to Charles Manson’s)—died on this day in 2012. Thinking of Vidal reminded me of an incredible interview I
TODAY: In 1978, Barbara Pym is a guest on Desert Island Discs. Gregory Pardlo writes a letter to Juneteenth: “You are a brick in the historical foundation upon which our country might reimagine its collective future.” | Lit Hub Politics Introducing Mighty SONG Writers, a weekly video series to benefit education non-profit Mighty Writers. First up:
July 31, 2020, 10:00am Right now, many of us are at home, sheltering in place with too much to do. Why then add yet another chore, reading poetry, to an already long list of to-dos? Because joy. Because we need at least one thing on that list to be something we want to do, enjoy