Legendary Mississippi author Greg Iles died Friday after a long battle with cancer. Read more
Tag: American Authors
‘Positive Obsession: The Life and Times of Octavia E. Butler’
Morris situates Butler’s career amid salient historical events and social movements, and she underscores the deep research that fueled Butler’s imagination, from reading slave narratives in Baltimore archives to studying precolonial West African, Nubian, and Igbo languages and cultures. Butler’s fictions—which Morris reads perceptively—convey cautionary tales warning against fascism, gender-based violence, and the consequences of global warming. All, Morris asserts, are driven by the question: What does it mean to be human? Read more
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‘An Oral History of Atlantis’ by Ed Park
Park’s delightful tales, which are driven by provocative ideas, strange occurrences, and gripping plots, pay tribute to the legacy of Kurt Vonnegut in the best ways. This pitch-perfect collection will linger in readers’ minds for a long time. Read more
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How Did the Author of ‘Space Raptor Butt Invasion’ Become One of Our Best Mainstream Horror Writers?
How Chuck Tingle went legit. Read more
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Martin Cruz Smith, Acclaimed Author of ‘Gorky Park,’ Dies at 82
Among Smith’s honors were being named a “grand master” by the Mystery Writers of America, and winning the Hammett Prize for “Havana Bay” and a Gold Dagger award for “Gorky Park.” Read more
Is Branden Jacobs-Jenkins the Best Playwright in America?
He is stepping into a new phase in his career -— winning a Pulitzer Prize and maybe a second Tony while writing the Prince musical “Purple Rain.” Read more
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Cooler Than Cool: The Life and Work of Elmore Leonard
“Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.” So reads the 10th of “10 Rules of Writing” (2007) by Elmore Leonard (1925-2013), the New Orleans-born, Detroit-raised, Hollywood-savvy author who changed the nature of crime stories (in print and on screen) while becoming one of the most successful and highly regarded writers of his genre and generation. Read more
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Stories by Harper Lee to Appear for the First Time in a New Collection
The book, out on Oct. 21 from Harper, includes eight previously unreleased stories and eight pieces of nonfiction that Lee published in various outlets between 1961 and 2006, including a profile of her friend, the writer Truman Capote, a cornbread recipe and a letter to Oprah Winfrey. Read more
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Joseph Wambaugh, Author With a Cop’s-Eye View, Is Dead at 88
Joseph Wambaugh, the master storyteller of police dramas, whose books, films and television tales powerfully caught the hard psychic realities of lonely street cops and flawed detectives trapped in a seedy world of greed and senseless brutality, died on Friday at his home in Rancho Mirage, Calif. Read more
Tom Robbins, Whose Comic Novels Drew a Cult Following, Dies at 92
Tom Robbins, whose cosmically comic novels about gargantuan-thumbed hitchhikers, stoned secret agents and mystic stockbrokers caught hold of millions of readers in the 1970s counterculture, died on Sunday at his home in La Conner, Wash. Read more
