Vampires! Vampires! Vampires! Read more
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Month: October 2023
The Unmarked Graveyard: Stories from Hart Island
Her writing was admired by Hemingway. Then her books — and body — disappeared. Read more
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On the Horror Fiction Renaissance
As authors across the world explore their darkest fears, horror fiction is evolving to offer a chilling reflection of our times. Read more
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Movie Adaptation of ‘Erasure’ by Percival Everett is Getting Good Reviews
Jeffrey Wright stars as Monk, a frustrated novelist who’s fed up with the establishment profiting from “Black” entertainment that relies on tired and offensive tropes. To prove his point, Monk uses a pen name to write an outlandish “Black” book of his own, a book that propels him to the heart of hypocrisy and the madness he claims to disdain. Watch trailer
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Chaucer Goes Digital as British Library Makes Works Available Online
The entire collection of Geoffrey Chaucer’s works held by the British Library is being made available in digital format after the completion of a two and a half year project to upload 25,000 images of the often elaborately illustrated medieval manuscripts. Read more
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Literature Machines
The Italian novelist Italo Calvino was unusually optimistic about the invention of a “literature machine.” In his 1967 essay “Cybernetics and Ghosts,” he imagines a computer that would be “capable of conceiving and composing poems and novels,” bringing to the page what humans “are accustomed to consider as the most jealously guarded attributes in our psychological life.” For him, literature is simply “a combinatorial game that pursues the possibilities implicit in its own material, independent of the personality” of the writer. When read today, Calvino’s predictions—“provocative and even profane” at the time, as he admitted—seem eerily prescient. Read more
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Winners of the 2023 Hugo Awards Announced
This weekend, the winners of the Hugo Awards, the Astounding Award for Best New Writer, and the Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book were announced at the 81st World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon). The ceremony was held October 21st at the Chengdu Science Fiction Museum in Chengdu, China. Read more
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Since the War, Events About Palestinian Culture Have Been Called Off
Some fear that the raft of cancellations at this moment of war and tragedy is limiting opportunities to foster dialogue and greater understanding. Read more
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‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ Movie Released
“Killers of the Flower Moon” is an epic western crime saga, where real love crosses paths with unspeakable betrayal. Watch trailer
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Literary Fiction is Dead, Long Live Literary Fiction!
As an English professor, I’m often asked, “What do you like to read?” Sometimes I answer, “Literary fiction.” By that phrase, I mean fiction that privileges art over entertainment. I did not know until recently that literary fiction—the phrase, not what it stands for—grew up with me. We’re about the same age. And while I hope I’m only midway through my life, literary fiction might be dead. More precisely, what might have died is literary fiction as a meaningful category in publishing and bookselling. Read more
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