The 3rd annual James Baldwin Festival of Words celebrates black excellence in the literary arts with a full slate of events. The festivities kick off on Friday, August 2nd at 4:30 p.m. in the auditorium of the Chattanooga Public Library Downtown and is free to the public. Read more
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One hundred years after his death, the Czech writer circulates as a pop idol of digital alienation. Read more
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His fascination with terrorism, cults and mass culture’s weirder turns has given his work a prophetic air. Here’s where to start. Read more
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Berry’s debut novel, “The Peacock and the Sparrow,” was released by Atria Books in May 2023 under the pen name I.S. Berry. The book was feted by both the New Yorker and NPR on their annual lists of the best books of the year. This month, the novel also won the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Allan Poe Award for best first novel by an American novelist, a significant industry award whose past recipients include Viet Thanh Nguyen and Tana French. Read more
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For the first time, China has more than 100 incarcerated writers, and Israel and Russia entered the list of the 10 countries with the most imprisoned writers. Read more
Didion was not really out to inspire us. She was looking at us and telling us what she saw, including our compulsion to weave myths for survival. Her distinctive prose and sharp eye were always tuned to an outsider’s frequency, even when she was actually an insider (as with most of her writing on Hollywood). Her essays are almost reflexively skeptical; she wrote with authority borne not so much from experience as from a refusal to give in to dogma. Read more
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She became a writer because her country vanished overnight. Jenny Erpenbeck, now 57, was 22 in 1989, when the Berlin Wall cracked by accident, then collapsed. She was having a “girls’ evening out,” she said, so she had no idea what had happened until the next morning. When a professor discussed it in class, she said, it became real to her.
The country she knew, the German Democratic Republic, or East Germany, remains a crucial setting for most of her striking, precise fiction. Her work, which has grown in acuity and emotional power, combines the complications of German and Soviet history with the lives of her characters, including those of her own family members, whose experiences echo with the past like contrapuntal music.
Her latest novel to be translated into English, “Kairos,” has been a breakthrough. It is now on the shortlist for the International Booker Prize and considered a favorite to win the award late next month. Read more
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We’ve all seen those headlines — you know the kind — that run something like, “The best American fantasy writer you’ve never heard of.” Who could that be, we wonder? Well, two possible answers to that particular question are Manly Wade Wellman (1903-1986) and Avram Davidson (1923-1993). It’s a safe bet you haven’t heard of either of them. Read more
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From March 20-24, 2024, San Diego will transform into a poetic hub where creativity, inspiration, and passion converge. This once-in-a-lifetime Sesquicentennial event will showcase some of the brightest stars in poetry, including Pulitzer Prize-winner Tracy K. Smith, Ruth Lilly Prize-winner Allison Joseph, Pulitzer Prize-finalist Bruce Weigl, and Guggenheim Fellowship winner Jay Parini. Read more
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