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Robert Macfarlane on Roger Deakin and the Origins of Wild Swimming

To Roger Deakin, water was a miraculous substance. It was curative and restorative, it was beautiful in its flow, it was a lens through which he often viewed the world, and it was a medium of imagination and reflection. “All water,” he scribbled in a notebook, “river, sea, pond, lake, holds memory and the space to think.” Read more

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Damon Young’s “What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker” wins Thurber Prize

Young, 42, of Pittsburgh co-founded and was editor-in-chief of “Very Smart Brothas;” he announced his departure from the website earlier this month. He is a columnist for GQ and has been published in numerous publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, New York Magazine, Time Magazine, Ebony and Jezebel magazines. Young describes himself as a “writer, critic, humorist, satirist and professional Black person.”

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John Steinbeck’s estate urged to let the world read his shunned werewolf novel

Years before becoming one of America’s most celebrated authors, John Steinbeck wrote at least three novels which were never published. Two of them were destroyed by the young writer as he struggled to make his name, but a third – a full-length mystery werewolf story entitled Murder at Full Moon – has survived unseen in an archive ever since being rejected for publication in 1930. Read more