Columns
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Notable Chicago: 7/29–8/4
Friday 7/29: City Lit Books welcomes Paul Liukart as he presents his new collection Animal Heart. Other readers include Gary D. Wilson, Leesa Cross-Smith, and Steve Karas. 6:30 p.m., free. Cory Martin reads from her new memoir Love Sick, a…
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HORN! REVIEWS: My Brilliant Friend
Since I’m nowhere near the first, let me be only the most recent to entreat you to read the story of Lenú…
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It Was an Honor Just to Be Nominated
We would all love to pretend that we’re above the euphoric rush of gaining approval. But winning feels good, and writing that truth in its fullness is a key step to understanding it. For the Guardian, Viet Thanh Nguyen discusses his…
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Welcome to the World of Wakanda
Last week, the exciting news came out that Roxane Gay will be joining Ta-Nehisi Coates as a co-writer on the second Black Panther series, World of Wakanda. The New York Times looks at how the series will center women both on the…
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Empire State of Memoir
For Lit Hub, Edward White writes about Jay Z and Morrissey’s experimental memoirs, investigating how both artists indulge and subvert what readers want from a musician’s autobiography: Where Morrissey gives us a conventional autobiography in an unconventional way—no chapters, paragraphs that…
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Dan Weiss’s Morning Coffee
Don’t forget to watch the corpse flower bloom today. Germs! The New Towns of Seoul. The 70s towns of England. Light pollution is everywhere.
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The Rumpus Interview with Yaa Gyasi
Yaa Gyasi discusses her debut novel Homegoing, growing up in Alabama, the multiplicity of black experiences, the legacy of slavery, and her writing process.
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Dark Magic Your Way to Better Writing
Are you in a rut with your writing? Blocked for ideas and inspiration? Finding those writing exercises designed to spark your imagination getting a little stale? Try some writing exorcises instead, courtesy of McSweeney’s. A little dark magic might go…
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#RumiWasntWhite
At the Los Angeles Review of Books, screenwriter Janice Rhoshalle Littlejohn makes a strong and timely case for Hollywood to quit casting big-name white actors no matter the role. Particularly egregious, and absurd, is the idea of Leonardo DiCaprio as the…
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DC Punk for Everyone
Dischord Records has made its entire discography available on Bandcamp, meaning that anyone can immediately become an expert on what it took many of us at least a full year of high school to collect via mixtape. The archive includes seminal DC…
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Serial Fiction While You Wait for Next Week’s Episode
NPR talks with the creators of Serial Box, a company self-described as the “HBO for readers.” Serial Box releases “episodes” you read over a 10-16 week season, in the hopes that readers will anticipate the next installment like they would…
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Girlhood Comes Home to Roost
I think I always knew this story about the rural road where I grew up needed to be told. At the Believer, Annie DeWitt talks to Brandon Hobson about realism, ambiguity, and how her own childhood folds into her new…