Posts by author
Stephanie Bento
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Fan Fiction
When two fans tweeted Florence Welch (of the indie rock band Florence + the Machine) about starting a book club, they never imagined she’d say yes. The Guardian explains the story behind the fan-inspired book club, Between Two Books. “It’s…
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The Way We Were
Things in my own life that make me want to write about them are often things that are unresolved. And I use writing to figure them out. Memoirists Meredith Maran, Dani Shapiro, Ayelet Waldman, Kate Christensen, and Nick Flynn speak in…
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Une Histoire Courte
The short story, as an individual message, settles the reader in a broader metropolitan system: a tiny project linked to a myriad of other tiny projects, in other places. Short-story vending machines are taking one city in the French Alps…
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Fireflies, Tweets, and Jolts of Nostalgia
Over at Slate, writer Elizabeth McCracken muses about what people miss most about home and how reminiscing on Twitter creates a shared experience. She writes: Previously I would have said that nostalgia can never be experienced secondhand, but it turns…
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Writing Memory
I think we all live in different ways. Some people don’t look back; some people dwell on the past. They are surrounded by mementos and pictures of the past. Other people don’t want to do that. It really depends on…
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The Twin Paradox
By running two lives that started from the same point off along divergent tracks, they throw up questions about our uniqueness, and the chances and choices that make us who we are. From Shakespeare to Stephen King, identical twins have played…
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First Comes Love…
Over at the New Yorker, Adelle Waldman explores how men and women authors write about marriage. Citing examples from Leo Tolstoy, Jane Austen, Karl Ove Knausgaard, Elena Ferrante, and many others, Waldman writes: Ideas about love, about its essential nature and…
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A Neapolitan Adventure
As I discovered during a visit in September, the series of books offered a unique view of this complicated city, leading me away from popular tourist sites and helping to explain the city’s social, economic and geographic divisions. To view…
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In Conversation with Roger Rosenblatt
In an interview with the New York Times’s Sunday Book Review, author Roger Rosenblatt reveals his favorite books, authors, and poems, and who he’d want to write his life story (you’ll never guess who it is!).
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Reading with Hermione
Our Shared Shelf looks poised to be ideal for sharing feminist learning, just as Watson aimed for it to be. British actress Emma Watson—best known for playing the role of Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter movies—is starting a feminist…
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The Magical World of Children’s Literature
Over at the Atlantic, Colleen Gillard takes a critical look at the differences between British and American children’s stories. While British stories for children tend to be rooted in fantasy and folklore, she writes, American children’s classics tend to be more…
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Looking into the Future
“What will happen in 2016 in books?” the Los Angeles Times asks in a recent article. And it offers a few predictions: 2016 will be the year of print books, science fiction, and independent presses, among other trends.