Author: GR

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In Praise of Good Bookstores by Jeff Deutsch

Deutsch, director of Chicago’s Seminary Co-op Bookstores, offers an eloquent and inspiring paean to the community bookstore … A deeply read and engaging guide, Deutsch presents the bookstore as “a necessary part of the habitat of a lively intelligence in touch with the world” and observes that a good bookstore must not only understand the many needs of its customers but must also provide the conditions for discovery. Read more

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First Issue of Captain America Comic Book Fetches $3.1 Million at Auction

A copy of the first Captain America comic book, featuring the memorable cover image of the superhero socking a stunned Hitler while fending off Nazi bullets, fetched more than $3.1 million at an auction Thursday, becoming one of the world’s priciest comic books. Read more

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2022 Whiting Awards celebrate 10 emerging writers

Since the award’s founding in 1985, Whiting winners have gone on to win countless awards and fellowships, including Pulitzers, National Book Awards, Tony Awards and Obies, and become familiar names in the process. Past winners have included Ocean Vuong, Colson Whitehead, Mary Karr, Sigrid Nunez, August Wilson, Don Mee Choi and many other gifted writers. Read more

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The Cruel Practice of Banning Books Behind Bars

Across the United States, agencies have issued an ever-evolving list of restrictions on what people in prison can read. Works by Black authors, civil rights literature, critiques of mass incarceration, books in languages other than English—all are frequently censored. (Meanwhile, Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf and books by David Duke have been allowed in some of those same prisons.) Read more

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Rabih Alameddine wins PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction for ‘The Wrong End of the Telescope’

Alameddine, a Lebanese American whose other works include the National Book Award finalist “An Unnecessary Woman,” will receive $15,000. Philip Roth, E.L. Doctorow and Karen Joy Fowler are among the previous PEN/Faulkner winners. Read more

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Margaret Atwood Wins the Hitchens Prize

The prize celebrates writers whose work exemplifies “a commitment to free expression and inquiry, a range and depth of intellect, and a willingness to pursue the truth without regard to personal or professional consequence.” Read more

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The novelist who wrote “How to Murder Your Husband” is now on trial for murdering her husband

A few years after Nancy Crampton Brophy—a self-published romance novelist—wrote an essay called “How to Murder Your Husband,” her husband was found shot to death in his classroom at the Oregon Culinary Institute in Portland. While that essay might have been a little bit of a red flag to investigators, the trial judge has deemed it inadmissible as evidence on the grounds it might prove prejudicial (you think?). Read more

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Junk Science and the American Criminal Justice System

“No one in America will ever know the number of innocent people convicted, sent to prison, and even executed because of the flood of rotten forensics and bogus scientific opinions presented to juries. In this intriguing and beautifully crafted book, Innocence Project lawyer M. Chris Fabricant illustrates how wrongful convictions occur, and he makes it obvious how they could be prevented.” — John Grisham, author of A Time for Mercy

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Selections from Maurice Sendak’s Personal Collection to be Sold to Benefit the Rosenbach

Christie’s New York is pleased to announce the sale of selections from artist and author Maurice Sendak’s personal library in its upcoming Fine Printed Books & Manuscripts Including Americana auction taking place online from 11-25 April … These items include a wonderful selection of books reflecting Sendak’s creative and literary interests. There are over two dozen first editions by Beatrix Potter … There are several books from the Brothers Grimm, including a rare presentation from them as well as the original autograph manuscript for their long-lost story Dear Mili, which Sendak illustrated for its first publication in 1988. Accompanying the Grimm tales are other works of German Romanticism, namely folk and fairy tales. There is notably a fine selection of Henry James, representing Sendak’s love of nineteenth-century literature, including first editions and presentation copies. Moving to the 20th century, writers and artists include Dr Seuss, Crockett Johnson, and William Steig, together with special editions of Sendak’s own works. Read more

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