2014
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Notable Chicago: 9/26–10/2
Friday 9/26: It’s Banned Books Week, and City Lit Books celebrates in a big way by inviting local writers and high school students to read passages from banned masterpieces. Some of the readings will be accompanied by music. 6:30 p.m.…
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Literature’s Smiles
For Electric Literature, noting that character shrugs and smiles are usually crutches in fiction, Matt Bell analyzes Cormac McCarthy’s use of smiles in Outer Dark, providing “a good reminder that very few rules hold up everywhere, and that great writers…
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Next Letter for Kids: Melanie Crowder
We’re sending our next Letter For Kids from Melanie Crowder, author of Parched. Melanie write about her “dogter” and her move to Colorado, where she meets the friendliest horse in the world. And she needs our help to give the friendliest horse…
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This Filthy Stuff
The New Republic has re-published a 1930 interview with a government censor, and it provides an interesting look into the mindset of the man charged with keeping “pollution” out of the hands of “innocent” New Englanders: Why, sometimes it’s the…
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Dan Weiss’s Morning Coffee
I hope that the Budapest Smile School is the weirdest thing you read about today. Being struck by lightning is more terrifying than I can imagine. Attention nerds: big deal prime number news. Maybe Marco Polo came to North America?…
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Sound & Vision: Monte Pittman
Musician Monte Pittman, who collaborates with Madonna, talks with Allyson McCabe about guitar, his childhood in Texas, and passing on what he’s learned to others.
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Fiction is Threatening
Hilary Mantel wrote a story imagining the death of Margaret Thatcher. Predictably, people went nuts. Luckily The Daily Mail was on hand to remind us all of the real values of Britain. The newspaper described how Mantel’s story has “provoked…
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Book With No Pictures
After publishing a collection of short stories earlier this year, B.J. Novak has just released his first book for children, Book With No Pictures. The title is pretty self-explanatory—as an interview with Novak in the Atlantic puts it, instead of traditional pictures,…
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Henry James & The Great YA Debate
Responding to the ongoing debate about whether or not American literature is saturated with young adult fiction (and if adults should read these novels), Christopher Beha, in the New Yorker, addresses A.O. Scott’s recent essay in the New York Times…
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Great Obituaries
How does it feel to be in charge of writing about the deaths of outstanding people? Over at the Paris Review, Margalit Fox tells us about her twenty years (and twelve hundreds obituaries) at the New York Times.
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Why I Chose Erika Meitner’s Copia for The Rumpus Poetry Book Club
Camille Dungy co-opts one of the many forms Erika Meitner uses in her new book Copia to tell us why she chose it for the Rumpus Poetry Book Club.
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Song of the Day: “I Start To Run”
The arrival of chillier weather means that the joggers among us may need some encouragement to meet our goals. But even the exercise-averse will appreciate the driving mania of White Denim’s single, “I Start To Run.” The Austin, Texas-based four-piece…