atlas obscura

  • This Week in Indie Bookstores

    This Week in Indie Bookstores

    Indie bookstore news from across the country and around the world!

  • This Week in Indie Bookstores

    This Week in Indie Bookstores

    Indie bookstore news from across the country and around the world!

  • This Week in Indie Bookstores

    Indie bookstore news from across the country and around the world!

  • This Week in Indie Bookstores

    Indie bookstore news from across the country and around the world!

  • VISIBLE: Women Writers of Color: Tamiko Nimura

    VISIBLE: Women Writers of Color: Tamiko Nimura

    Tamiko Nimura talks about the influence of history, memory, and silence on her work; creating a private MFA for herself; and writing a generational memoir.

  • Notable NYC: 1/21–1/27

    Saturday 1/21: Women’s March on New York City. Resist. On Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, 47th St and 2nd Ave, 11 am, free. Eléna River, Ryan Collerd, and Carol Snow discuss works of poetry. Berl’s Poetry Shop, 7 p.m., free. Mahogany L…

  • Fading into Mystery

    For Atlas Obscura, Abby Norman retraces Barbara Newhall Follett’s mysterious history: She is called a child prodigy, a literary luminary, a spirit of nature. So why have so few people heard of her or read her work? For one, Barbara…

  • Living in the New York Public Library

    For Atlas Obscura, Sarah Laskow delves into the secret apartments of the New York Public Library system. Most people only dream of living in a library, but for some people, this was reality. The apartments—which were in the Carnegie libraries—were branches of…

  • Crying on Cue

    While it sounds pretty weird, this was standard practice back in the day. According to Patrick Miller in his article “Music and the Silent Film,” Hollywood director D.W. Griffith enlisted a brass band to encourage extras during the battle sequences of…

  • Macaroni Men

    The seemingly non-sequitur first lines of “Yankee Doodle” sound like they’re about food, but Michael Waters in Atlas Obscura reveals the lyrics’ gender-bending history: The Oxford Magazine similarly described the macaroni as not belonging to the gender binary: “There is indeed a kind of…

  • A Library for Two Countries

    Situated along the US-Canada border, the Haskell Free Library and Opera House “is the only library in the world that exists and operates in two countries at once,” Atlas Obscura reports.

  • Podcatcher #3: Poetry Jawns

    Podcatcher #3: Poetry Jawns

    Emma Sanders and Alina Pleskova charm us with their affection for each other, DIY ethos, and belief on Poetry Jawns, what matters is the work.