An Army of Readers
The more tools that we get for communication and collaboration, the more we’re taking reading and writing — these really solitary pursuits — and building communities around them for connection…
“I knew from the beginning I wanted to tell the story”
It’s been a big week—no, month—no, year—for Rumpus Essays Editor Roxanne Gay, who has two books coming out this summer, both of which have already been widely praised. Yesterday, Gay talked…
One Hundred Years of Dublin
Gather round, ye James Joyce devotees: Mark O’Connell has an essay (replete with some pretty nifty info-graphics) up at Salon on the Dublin of the past and present: Everyone in Dubliners is thinking about a way out,…
Boa Constrictor in the Derby Hat
The Little Prince is one of those books which just as easily affects adults as children, and it’s hard to go long without encountering it. Still, the story remains a bit…
Race, Power, Publishing
The disproportionally white publishing industry matters because agents and editors stand between writers and readers. Anika Noni Rose put it perfectly in Vanity Fair this month: “There are so many writers of color…
Hair-Combing with Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Gabriel García Márquez accolades continue to roll in—over at The Paris Review, the complete text of Silvana Paternostro’s oral biography of Márquez is available. It’s full of enlightening tidbits from the author’s friends and family, like: GUILLERMO…
The Emancipation of Digital Reading?
Is it possible to read War and Peace on an iPhone? In the Pacific Standard, Casey Cepp considers whether apps can actually help us become better, more thoughtful readers: This literary diet will not be for everyone.…
You Are Invisible
Writing in the New Yorker about the smartphone app Cloak, Mark O’Connell offers a thoroughly beautiful and poetic commentary on the ontology of visibility: By generating a kind of omnipresence—whereby we are always…
For Such Magnificence
There have been, and will continue to be, a lot of eulogies for Gabriel García Márquez this week. In the Sunday Times, Salman Rushdie has an especially nice meditation on magical realism: But if…
A (Bookstore) Affair to Remember
Springtime makes us think about past relationships, and maybe there are none more romantic than the ones we’ve shared with the bookstores we’ve worked at. Janet Potter writes in The Millions about her own…
It Ends With Eating a Strawberry
It might be snowing outside, but April is still National Poetry Month, and Tin House has a wonderful interview up with poet Ellen Bass. Read about her writing routine, the Miss America Pageant,…