If your dream is to talk like Moira Rose from Schitt’s Creek, look no further than Mrs. Byrne’s Dictionary of Unusual, Obscure, and Preposterous Words, one of the dictionaries Catherine O’Hara used to tweak her iconic character’s lines. Read more
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“In Tom Lin’s novel, the atmosphere of Cormac McCarthy’s West, or that of the Coen Brothers’ True Grit, gives way to the phantasmagorical shades of Ray Bradbury, Charles Finney’s The Circus of Dr. Lao, and Katherine Dunn’s Geek Love. Yet The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu has a velocity and perspective all its own, and is a fierce new version of the Westward Dream. This is a superb novel that declares the arrival of an astonishing new voice.” —Jonathan Lethem
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Rahele Megosha, a high school senior from South Dakota, has been named the 2021 Poetry Out Loud national champion. The competition invites high school students to memorize and recite great poetry, both classic and modern. Read more
A nation recovering from the worst health emergency in 100 years needs novels full of humor. But if laughter is the best medicine, our fiction is in dangerously short supply. It’s an odd and persistent problem, compounded by the fact that most of the novels marketed as funny are, in fact, not very funny. Or they traffic in wit so dry their lips would crack if they smiled. Read more
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Ten years after the debut of his memoir about life as a widowed father, a Minnesota writer is getting the Hollywood treatment — with comedian Kevin Hart playing him in a new film debuting in June. Read more
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In Minden, Nevada, a siren goes off every day at noon and 6 p.m. Members of the Washoe Tribe have been asking the town to silence the 6 p.m. siren because of its affiliation with a racist sundown ordinance that was in place for much of the 20th century. Read more
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With mainstream media uninterested in books coverage that doesn’t get clicks, writers and readers are being left out in the cold. Read more
Following a long court battle, and after they had been held in a vault for decades, unknown illustrations by the great author can be seen at long last, 97 years after Kafka’s death. Read more
A self-described “picture writer,” he wrote and illustrated more than 70 books for young children, selling more than 170 million copies. Read more
