District of Books
The American city that spends the most money on books, magazines, and newspapers—Washington, DC—will soon be left without any chain bookstores. Melville House reports that as of Dec. 31, 2015, there will…
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Stephanie Bento
218 posts
Stephanie Bento is a writer, classical cellist, and photographer living in Washington, DC. In her writing, she is interested in exploring the musicality of sound and form, and our connection to time and place. Find out more about her creative work at saudadebelle.com, or say hello/bonjour on Twitter @saudadebelle.
Language and Exile
Over at the New Yorker, writer Jhumpa Lahiri has written a hauntingly beautiful personal essay about learning Italian, leaving English, and finding her voice in linguistic exile: How is it…
Having It All
Anne-Marie Slaughter’s latest book, Unfinished Business, “suggests that equality cannot be achieved unless men and women are equally responsible for raising a family and bringing home income,” the Globe and…
Mystery in Silicon Valley
Was this a brilliant viral marketing scheme, a literary treasure hunt orchestrated by some corporation angling for free publicity to promote a new energy drink or video game? Or was…
Queen of Hearts
“Hello” is not really a compassionate breakup song, like Carole King and Toni Stern’s “It’s Too Late”—the breakup here seems to have happened long ago—but rather an acknowledgment that you…
Literary Iceland
Like the glaciers that cover much of the country, Iceland is covered with thick layers of stories. And like the volcanoes that roil beneath that icy crust, more stories are…
Open Books, Open Worlds
I wouldn’t be a songwriter if it wasn’t for the books I read as a kid. … When you can escape into a book it trains your imagination to think…
Language, Love, and Loss
Over at The Toast, Nicole Chung has written a deeply personal and beautiful essay about coming to terms with her adoption, embracing her Korean heritage, and learning her mother tongue…
Moulin Rimbaud?
Poetry is one of the pillars of the town’s cultural policy. There’s a new museum in the old town of Charleville-Mézières, France dedicated to Arthur Rimbaud, one of the country’s…
We Think Writing Is Sexy
So I’m here to tell you that you can make a living as a writer, but you (might) have to let go of some notions of what “making a living…
Time Travel in the Antarctic
In the latest installment of the New York Times‘s Sunday Book Review, Caroline Alexander writes an elegant review of Rebecca Hunt’s Everland, a novel about two expeditions in the Antarctic…
The Joy of Writing
In an exclusive interview with Authorlink, Sara Gruen, author of Water for Elephants and At the Water’s Edge, talks about research in fiction, story arcs, and the sheer love of…