Author: GR

Posted on by

Author Julia Alvarez is the Subject of a New PBS Documentary

…a PBS documentary premiering Tuesday will show how bestselling author Julia Alvarez, who was born in New York and lived the first 10 years of her life in the Dominican Republic, became one of the country’s most influential Latina writers and carved a path for other authors. Read more

(We earn a small commission if you click above and buy the book at Bookshop.org)

Posted on by

A Queen of Horror Delivers More Delightfully Twisted Stories

Critics have called Argentine writer Mariana Enríquez a queen of horror, and since the publication of her gorgeous, monstrous novel “Our Share of Night,” fans have turned her into a literary rock star. Her new short story collection, “A Sunny Place for Shady People,” delivers another striking performance. Read more

(We earn a small commission if you click above and buy the book at Bookshop.org)

Posted on by

How Historical Fiction Redefined the Literary Canon

“A historical novel has won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 12 out of the last 15 years, and historical fiction has made up 70 percent of all novels short-listed for these three major American prizes since the turn of the 21st century. Today, writers like Colson Whitehead, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Louise Erdrich, and Hernan Diaz are less interested in the way we live now than the way we were.

But this generation of prize-winning novelists is different from their forebears in another major way—they’re a lot less white. American literature’s overwhelming turn toward the historical past has both motivated, and been motivated by, the increasing recognition of Black, Asian American, Latinx, and Indigenous writers in the literary field. Over the past five decades, writers of color have been celebrated, prized, and canonized almost exclusively for the writing of historical fiction: narratives of war, immigration, colonialism, and enslavement that span generations and honor previously disregarded histories. Of the top 10 most-taught novels by writers of color published after 1945, eight are works of historical fiction. Of the 54 novels by writers of color to be short-listed for a major American prize between 1980 and 2010, all but four are works of historical fiction. Read more

(We earn a small commission if you click above and buy the book at Bookshop.org)

Posted on by

How the Unchecked Power of Sheriffs Threatens Democracy

Read investigative journalist Pishko’s carefully reported history, and you’ll appreciate how spot-on Jon Hamm’s evilly unlawful lawman Roy Tillman was in the 2023-24 season of the drama Fargo. One of Pishko’s archetypes is Arizona sheriff Mark Lamb, who proclaims to his constituents, “Sheriffs are the last line of defense in this country. We don’t work for anybody but you.” But that’s not really true: whether directly or not, and whether knowingly or not, he works for a network of extremist right-wing groups, most based in the West and grounded in the John Birch Society and its offshoots, “who all believed that the county sheriff was the only legitimate law enforcement.” Read more

(We earn a small commission if you click above and buy the book at Bookshop.org)