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
Category: Authors
Meet the Novelist Who Was Lynched By An Angry Mob and Lived to Tell the Tale
Ned Buntline is the only American novelist who was lynched by an angry mob and lived to tell the tale, although he much preferred telling fictitious tales that made him seem heroic. Read more
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USPS To Release Shel Silverstein Stamp
The U.S. Postal Service will honor author and illustrator Shel Silverstein with a Forever stamp featuring artwork from his book, “The Giving Tree.” The first-day-of-issue event will be held at the school Shel Silverstein attended, Chicago’s Darwin Elementary School. Read more
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Books by Harry Crews are Being Reissued by Penguin Classics
This week, Penguin Classics will reissue Crews’ memoir “A Childhood: A Biography of a Place”(1978) and his debut novel, “The Gospel Singer” (1968). The imprint’s publisher and acquiring editor, Elda Rotor, recalled being “intrigued by his influence as an author and a teacher and curious about the craft of storytelling.” Struck by Crews’ “larger than life” mark on literature, she hopes the reissues will allow a new, wider readership to wrestle with his works and “revisit them through the lens of classics.” Read more
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The road well travelled: 100 years of Jack Kerouac
Nature-loving mystic or proto-dudebro? Untameable free spirit or reclusive mama’s boy? On the centenary of his birth, it is time to look past the icon at the ‘bleeding ball of contradictions’ behind it. Read more
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An Author Wrote About Her Sister’s Murder. It Led to a Breakthrough.
Cristina Rivera Garza wanted to shed light on the life of her sister, killed 30 years ago. Her book, part of a larger call for justice by women in Mexico, helped locate the suspect. Read more
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Toshio Mori endured internment camps and overcame discrimination to become the first Japanese American to publish a book of fiction
“Yokohama, California” remained out of print for 35 years before the University of Washington Press added it to their “Classics of Asian American Literature” and reprinted it in 1985. The book continues to be available through the publisher. Another edition was released in 2015. Read more
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C. J. Sansom Awarded Diamond Dagger
CJ Sansom has been announced as the recipient of the highest honour in British crime writing, the Crime Writers’ Association (CWA) Diamond Dagger. One of Britain’s bestselling historical novelists, Christopher John Sansom was born in 1952 in Edinburgh. He was educated at Birmingham University with a BA and then a PhD in history. After working in a variety of jobs, he retrained as a solicitor and practised in Sussex, until becoming a full-time writer. Read more
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A literary injustice: The ambitious, serious Russell Hoban is best remembered for his children’s books about Frances the Badger
In a more just universe, Russell Hoban would be widely celebrated as the author of one of the most ambitious novels of the later 20th century: Riddley Walker (1980). Miserably, though, in much of the English-reading world – including the US, where he was born – he remains best known for his children’s books about Frances the Badger. They have remained continuously in print for more than half a century. Read more
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Into the Belly of the Whale With Sjón
The Icelandic novelist, poet and Björk collaborator is a surrealist for our time. Read more
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