The Resumes of Identity We Present to Strangers: A Conversation with Dolly Alderton
Dolly Alderton discusses her new novel, GHOSTS.
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Posts Tagged: UK
There Are No Rules: A Conversation with Jo Lloyd
Jo Lloyd discusses her debut story collection, SOMETHING WONDERFUL.
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A Psychogeographical Bildungsroman: Talking with Jo Hamya
Jo Hamya discusses her debut novel, THREE ROOMS.
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This Week in Indie Bookstores
Indie bookstore news from across the country and around the world!
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This Week in Indie Bookstores
Indie bookstore news from across the country and around the world!
...moreThis Week in Indie Bookstores
Indie bookstore news from across the country and around the world!
...moreThis Week in Trumplandia
Welcome to This Week in Trumplandia. Check in with us every Thursday for a weekly roundup of the most pertinent content on our country, which is currently spiraling down a crappy toilet drain. You owe it to yourself, your community, and your humanity to contribute whatever you can, even if it is just awareness of […]
...moreThis Week in Indie Bookstores
Amazon’s revolutionary new way to sell books in a physical brick and mortar store, has opened in New York City. Everyone old is new again. Even chain bookstores, like the UK’s Waterstones, thrives because of booksellers’ personal touches, like book recommendations.
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The Rumpus Interview with Erik Kennedy
Poet Erik Kennedy discusses literary community and his formative years as a young writer in New Jersey, and shares two new prose poems.
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A Dyslexic’s Guide to Infinity
In my memory, the Learning Support room is always shadowy. Outside, other girls are forever laughing as they amble past.
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The Alienation of an Irish Abortion
Was it a dream? A nightmare? I felt like I’d been sold a lie. There was no husband or caring partner, no safe home or solid income. Just me, pregnant and alone, in an abortion clinic with my rapist.
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Fair Dancin’ Mad: A Scottish Town Fights Trump
Councilor Ford pauses to catch his breath. “For goodness sakes do not elect [Trump]. It would be a catastrophe. Not only for the United States but for the world.”
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The Rumpus Interview with Nina Stibbe
Author Nina Stibbe discusses her new novel Paradise Lodge, our obsession with character likeability, and how she more than flirts with feminism.
...moreBrian Eno Against a Brexit
Brian Eno released a statement on Facebook this weekend urging British citizens to vote against a Brexit from the EU. Eno urged British citizens, who he referred to as “complacent on the issue, like me,” to consider the importance of the EU’s influence on the global stage, citing its significant work in promoting workers’ rights, gun […]
...moreNo Context, No Clue
An ad campaign by Penguin Random House in the UK meant to intrigue readers into purchasing classic books has instead sparked controversy for being anti-Russian. The ad features an unattributed line from the novel Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev: “Aristocracy, liberalism, progress, principles… Useless words! A Russian doesn’t need them.” Russian ex-pats living in London are questioning PRH’s motives in […]
...moreIntellectual Property’s Much-Needed Evolution
World Intellectual Property Day, the greatest of all spring holidays, was this Tuesday, April 26th. In honor of the holiday, the UK’s Intellectual Property Minister Baroness Neville-Rolfe made a statement calling for an update in the legal concept, Billboard reports: The process of digitization has transformed the world around us at a furious pace. It […]
...moreCensoring Censorship
Emma Garman discusses the ability of UK’s elite to pay lawyers to keep their names out of the press. She raises the topics of censorship, public interest, and the availability of these resources to people of all classes: The loftiest interpretation of public interest is our common concern with the workings of government, but we’re […]
...moreWhy We Need Libraries
For VICE, Amelia Dimoldenberg asks people in London why they visit their local libraries. Since 2010, UK has lost nearly 350 libraries because of cuts in local spending. But the answers Dimoldenberg receives show how necessary libraries still are: “The library is a great part of the community, especially for young people who find it hard to study […]
...morePublic Poetry
I’m interested in Roland Barthes’s idea that mythology is essentially a type of speech, and that speech defines a culture. Poetry can define the dominant languages we have in culture—and now those languages are advertising and the news media. So says Robert Montgomery, a Scottish poet who creates public art with his poems by posting […]
...moreUK Reggae Renaissance
Influenced by the heyday of ’70s and ’80s reggae in the UK, new artists are gathering a following in the region, the Guardian reports. Marcia Richards of the London band the Skints believes the renewed interest has something to do with the fact that the other bands in her scene have built followings organically, by playing show after show, rather […]
...moreThree Little Words.
Exciting news for poets everywhere! Northumberland’s Northern Poetry Library is piloting a new poetic form called the anchored terset. The Guardian reports: “The anchored terset strips poetry down to the bones, consisting of four lines, three words and just one piece of punctuation.”
...moreThis Week in Indie Bookstores
If you ever wanted to own one of the nation’s oldest bookstores, now’s your chance. Otto Bookstore in Williamsport, Pennsylvania has been operating since 1841, but the 81-year-old proprietor is in the market to sell. The Oregonian names Portland’s 10 best bookstores, and world-famous Powell’s didn’t make the cut. That said, Powell’s is expanding, so maybe the famous […]
...morePaying Authors to Appear
The British Society of Authors has called on literary festival organizers to pay authors who make appearances at events. The organization is asking that any literary festivals that charge entrance fees pay authors a minimum fee. At present, few events pay, and those that offer an appearance fee typically pay as little as £150, or about […]
...moreThis Week in Indie Bookstores
Hong Kong is dominated by two kinds of bookstores—the independent shops specializing in political books and pornography banned by China and the shops secretly owned by Beijing’s communist government. A Tokyo-based bookstore hosting a book fair centered around democracy and freedom suspended the event after criticism. Customers nostalgic for Borders bookstores need only to head […]
...moreThis Week in Indie Bookstores
The Canadian bookstore that discovered a hundred-year-old photo album has solved the mystery of the photos’ origin. They belonged to an Edmonton man born in 1919. San Francisco is a city filled with bookstores, and SF Weekly takes a look at some of the best. Oxford Bookstores in Kolkata, India will hold a literary festival […]
...moreCriminalizing Kink in the UK: The 50 Shades Effect
Last month I reached out to LA-based expat Anna Span, an English porn producer (and one-time Liberal Democrat candidate) who awhile back, fought the UK’s ban on showing female ejaculation in porn—and won! I was anxious to hear her take on the recent crackdown on sadomasochistic practices in adult films, specifically whether “BDSM-themed art porn” […]
...moreUK Publishing is Racist, Too
The Writing the Future report . . . found that the “best chance of publication” for a black, Asian or minority ethnic (BAME) writer was to write literary fiction conforming to a stereotypical view of their communities, addressing topics such as “racism, colonialism or post-colonialism as if these were the primary concerns of all BAME […]
...moreSomebody Who Has Found the Words
Recently in the UK, poetry seems to have found its way back into mainstream culture, which of course elicits the question: did it ever leave? Over at Newsweek, Howard Swains examines the reasons we return to poetry even in an age when words like “distraction” and “multimedia” tend to hijack any dicsussion of art or […]
...moreProposed Internet Censorship In The UK
Cory Doctorow explains a law currently proposed in the UK that would automatically censor internet user’s browsers. This automatic censoring is proposed by several Members of Parliament, the Daily Mail, and various British religious groups. The proposed web filtering aims to protect children from stumbling upon pornographic material, however, there are concerns that the filter may inadvertently make […]
...morePhone-Hacking Scandal’s Latest
With more unraveling of the Murdoch/phone-hacking scandal, the consequences and reverberations of the case have grown extensive and increasingly grave. The latest development came to light this morning when Sean Hoare, a former employee of the News of the World, who initially outed Andy Coulson for his involvement and awareness of the phone-hacking activity at […]
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