literary friendships

  • Fast Friends: Mark Twain and Helen Keller

    A new article on Open Culture examines the fascinating friendship between Mark Twain and Helen Keller, two of the 20th century’s most revolution-minded popular authors. Twain was taken with Keller from their first meeting, and made it a personal mission…

  • Buddies, Bishop and Gunn

    Colm Toíbín, author of On Elizabeth Bishop, has a lovely long reflection at the Guardian about Bishop’s friendship with Thom Gunn, and the parallels in the artists’ life and work. Bishop and Gunn both shied away from writing about mentally ill mothers…

  • Literary Friendships

    Rumpus interviews editor Rebecca Rubenstein has an awesome interview with Cheryl Strayed (a.k.a. Dear Sugar), Lidia Yuknavitch, and Suzy Vitello at BuzzFeed Books. They discuss how they make and sustain amazing and inspiring literary friendships amid the chaos of writing,…

  • Live Forever

    Live Forever

    In September of 1932, just hours after his uncle’s funeral, twelve-year-old Ray Bradbury was walking down the familiar streets of Waukegan, Illinois when he spotted a carnival tent on the shores of Lake Michigan. The night prior, young Bradbury had…