detroit
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Little Free Libraries Come to Detroit
Detroit has been trying to remake itself as a city that welcomes creative people, particularly writers, such as with the Write A House program that grants writers a house in the city. Now, Detroit is getting twenty Little Free Libraries,…
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Detroit
New Hollywood Vegas: Notes from an ExtraJuliette Lewis will decide to stage dive onto just me. Later, Drew Barrymore will make Alia Shawkat cry in front of a hundred extras. Later, Juno will face-plant. Hard.
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Homesteading Detroit
Detroit has a large inventory of vacant homes. Two years ago, Toby Barlow thought a great way to repopulate the city–and get new taxpayers–would be giving houses away to writers. Write a House plans on giving away its first house…
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Detroit: America’s Ciudad Juárez
Even before there was a war in Ciudad Juárez, I remember that Juárez had the feel of a war zone. It wasn’t until I visited Detroit for the first time that I rediscovered this feeling all over again.
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The Rumpus Interview with Frank H. Wu
Frank H. Wu, the Chancellor and Dean of UC Hastings College of the Law, talks about writing, race, assimilation, his hometown of Detroit, and the similarities between the Vincent Chin and Trayvon Martin cases.
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Former Detroit Autoworker Named Poet Laureate for 2011-12
Philip Levine, at 83 years old, has been named the Poet Laureate for 2011-2012. As a former autoworker from Detroit, his poetry draws largely on his working-class Jewish background. Deemed “America’s most acclaimed working-class poet,” his work expresses the “simple…
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Fetishizing Ruins
“So much ruin photography and ruin film aestheticizes poverty without inquiring of its origins, dramatizes spaces but never seeks out the people that inhabit and transform them, and romanticizes isolated acts of resistance without acknowledging the massive political and social…
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Politics Sunday
“One in four Americans is employed to protect the rich.” Here’s an underreported story: Dominicans are coming to the aid of Haitians, despite a less-than-idyllic history between the two countries. VICE is taking a ton of heat for its treatment…
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Morning Coffee
NY Times on how your brain physically manifests abstract ideas and the Tanzanian Spray Toad. The Hubble has detected an alien spacecraft (or just a comet or something, whatever). The universe is hella closer to death than we thought. (via…
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Morning Coffee
Don’t tell anyone, but today is the last day of the year. Other rad things you can make out of books. Can farming save Detroit? Sema Bekirovic takes some pretty impressive pictures. Romeo and Juliet as you misremember it. Why…
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Lazy Journalists Love Pictures of Abandoned Stuff
About a week ago Vice published an amusing article by Thomas Morton about what happens when journalists from outside Detroit come into the city to do a story: they cover their preconceptions, shoot “ruin porn,” and miss actual stories right under…
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An Agrarian Revolution In Detroit (And Oakland)
“Were I an aspiring farmer in search of fertile land to buy and plow, I would seriously consider moving to Detroit. There is open land, fertile soil, ample water, willing labor, and a desperate demand for decent food. And there…