Sinclair Lewis captured the narrow-mindedness and conformity of middle-class America in the first half of the 20th century. On the 100th anniversary of his best-selling novel “Babbitt,” Robert Gottlieb revisits Lewis’s life and career. Read more
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At last, in “Literary Alchemist: The Writing Life of Evan S. Connell,” journalist, biographer and Kansas City resident Steve Paul has constructed a meticulous, intriguing, and long-overdue appraisal of a talent deserving of wider attention. Read more
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Bernardine Evaristo is to be the next president of the Royal Society of Literature, becoming the first writer of colour to hold the position. Read more
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Portis, who died in 2020, is best known for “True Grit,” the modern classic about 14-year-old Mattie Ross, who enlists a grizzled, one-eyed U.S. Marshal named Rooster Cogburn to help her hunt down her father’s murderer. Read more
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A rape conviction at the center of a memoir by award-winning author Alice Sebold has been overturned because of what authorities determined were serious flaws with the 1982 prosecution and concerns the wrong man had been sent to jail. Read more
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…Herbert George Wells (1866-1946), a towering genius successful in many genres, knew, influenced or was admired by virtually every major writer and thinker of his time, between the publication of his first novel, “The Time Machine,” in 1895 and the end of World War II. Read more
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Turkish authorities should not charge Nobel laureate and PEN International Vice President Orhan Pamuk with “insulting” Atatürk and the Turkish flag, PEN International said in a statement on Tuesday, as an investigation has been launched into his novel “Nights of Plague” (Veba Geceleri). Read more
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Whether it’s fiction, fantasy, or biographies, books play a major role in our lives and we must celebrate their creators! Today, take a moment to appreciate the author(s) that spent countless hours writing your favorite books. Read more
A legal battle is raging over manuscripts written by the antisemitic writer Louis-Ferdinand Céline that disappeared almost eight decades ago. Read more
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BRAM STOKER, Mark Twain, Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Louis Stevenson, Lafcadio Hearn. In this list, Hearn — a contemporary of the other writers — stands out. Unlike the rest, his is no longer a household name. Yet, at the end of the 19th century, he was one of the most well-known authors in the West. “Lafcadio Hearn has been forgotten,” Romanian American poet Andrei Codrescu wrote in 2019, “with two remarkable exceptions: in Louisiana and in Japan.” Read more
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