Remembering his 100th birthday, Maryland’s capital city gave honors this weekend to the late author Alex Haley and his extended family, citing his research that led to a greater understanding by all Americans about slavery’s legacy. Read more
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It’s hard to describe how much fun this novel is—Moreno-Garcia, whose Mexican Gothic (2020) gripped readers last year, proves to be just as good at noir as she is at horror. The novel features memorable characters, taut pacing, an intricate plot, and antiheroes you can’t help but root for. A noir masterpiece. Read more
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The Glass Menagerie, a four-character Tennessee Williams play that is ranked among his greatest, is the centerpiece of the sixth annual Tennessee Williams Festival St. Louis… Read more
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Exciting news for high school writers: Amanda Gorman and Penguin Random House have teamed up to launch the Amanda Gorman Award for Poetry. The award will recognize a senior from a public high school for an original poem, and the winner will receive $10,000. The Amanda Gorman Award for Poetry is one of five creative writing awards given by Penguin Random House, whose categories include fiction/drama, personal essay/memoir, and spoken word; current high school seniors who attend U.S. public schools and plan on continuing their education in fall 2022 are encouraged to apply. As of this year, the Penguin Random House Creative Writing Awards have awarded over $2.8 million to public high school students for their original writing. Read more
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Much has been made of the trend of organizing one’s books by color: some find it cute, some find it a disturbing, theatrical perversion of the insular process of reading. But despite the controversy of color-coordinated shelves, they’re not that popular: a new poll administered by YouGov has discovered that only 2% of British readers organize their bookshelves by color. Instead, by far, the most popular way of organizing one’s bookshelves is utter randomness. The YouGov poll found that a whopping 43% of bookshelf-having Britons don’t organize their bookshelves in any way; 23% organize them by genre, and 21% by size. Perhaps surprisingly, only 11% sort alphabetically by author, and only 3% sort alphabetically by title. Read more
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The mysterious death of the Japanese National Railways’ first chief casts its shadow over this brilliantly polyphonic finale, which faithfully recreates real-life events in postwar Tokyo. Read more
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The memoir, first published in 2020, explores Tomine’s life through a series of autobiographical sketches. When a sudden medical incident lands Tomine in the emergency room, he begins to question if it was really all worthwhile: despite the accolades and opportunities of a seemingly charmed career, it’s the gaffes, humiliations, slights, and insults he’s experienced (or caused) within the industry that loom largest in his memory. Read more
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Why is English spelling so weird and unpredictable? Don’t blame the mix of languages; look to quirks of timing and technology. Read more
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The Romance Writers of America has withdrawn an award for a novel widely criticized for its sympathetic portrait of a cavalry officer who participated in the slaughter of Lakota people at the Battle of Wounded Knee. Read more
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Writing didn’t serve the purpose I wanted it to, which was to fix the fundamentally broken relationship between myself and other people. Read more
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