Finding Dear Sugar’s Boot
During the opening scene of the adaptation of Cheryl Strayed‘s memoir, Wild, Reese Witherspoon throws her boot off a cliff. Now, a hiker along the Pacific Crest Trail has located…
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Ian MacAllen
1314 posts
Ian MacAllen is the author of Red Sauce: How Italian Food Became American (Rowman & Littlefield, April 2022). His writing has appeared in Chicago Review of Books, Southern Review of Books, The Offing, 45th Parallel Magazine, Little Fiction, Vol 1. Brooklyn, and elsewhere. Find him at IanMacAllen.com.
Lost in Translation, Lost in Context
PEN America generated quite a controversy when it decided to honor French satirical paper Charlie Hebdo. Six authors called for a boycott of the gala and circulated a petition slamming…
The Rise of the Private Library
The American public library system has been one of the earliest victims of conservative austerity. But while the public library system slowly collapses, a new modern iteration of the members-only…
A Philip Roth for a New Generation
Superficially, Philip Roth and Paul Beatty might appear as polar opposites. But over at Forward, Hannah Assouline argues that Beatty could be Roth’s literary heir. Assouline calls Beatty’s latest novel, The Sellout,…
Too Many Books?
Each holiday season, Icelandic readers enjoy the jólabókaflóð. This seemingly unpronounceable word is best translated as the Christmas Book Flood, a tradition of a rush of new books released in…
Notable NYC: 5/9–5/15
Saturday 5/9: Lewis Freedman and Alli Warren join the Segue Series. Zinc Bar, 4:30 p.m., $5. Sunday 5/10: Anne Enright launches The Green Road. McNally Jackson, 7 p.m., free. Morgan…
Libraries, Now in 3D
3D printers are the latest accessory arriving in modern public libraries. However, just like when libraries introduced technologies such as the Internet, 3D printers raise concerns over what the public…
McSweeney’s Seeks Donations
The 18-year-old independent publisher McSweeney’s is looking to raise some money for a new wave of projects. The publisher of Timothy McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, The Believer, The Organist podcast, and more…
Try, Try Again
Missouri Review editor Michael Nye explains the importance of persistence when it comes to submitting to literary journals, saying that editors do begin to recognize the names and writing of…
Finding Kurtz
Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is driven by the search and discovery of Kurtz, the man turned mad by Africa. Kurtz is the pale white colonizer who rapes the continent,…
Notable NYC: 5/2–5/8
Saturday 5/2: Independent Bookstore Day: Events are being held throughout the day at your neighborhood bookstore. The following stores are hosting special events: WORD; Housing Works; McNally Jackson; Greenlight Bookstore; BookCourt;…
A World Without Libraries
Libraries are under threat, and those that want to survive will need to modernize. But what does the world look like if libraries change too much, or cease to exist…