Jump to navigation Skip to content
“If you believe in literature...then you believe that some of these books have the power to transform people and the way they see the world.” Danny Schaffer, a member of the Books Through Bars volunteer collective, which matches and sends requested books to incarcerated people, talks about the importance of access to knowledge, history, and literature in the prison system.
December’s must-read poetry books; the tricks of menu design; LARB Books acquires Les Figues Press; and other news.
Three Whiting Literary Magazine Prizes totaling up to $120,000 will be given annually for print and digital publications. The new awards program is intended to support both “nimble upstarts as well as established journals.”
Bad Sex in Fiction Award shortlist announced; the enduring challenge of Hart Crane’s poem “The Bridge”; jewelry made from books; and other news.
Planning to play some board games or learn some new words over the holiday weekend? Get some insight from this New Yorker video as professional Scrabble players discuss and reenact their most improbable, most regretful, and most humbling plays and moves.
Dictionaries for prisoners; Thanksgiving poems; Liz Phair signs two-book deal with Random House; and other news.
Marilynne Robinson on democracy and discourse; Chinua Achebe’s Google Doodle; the seven sins of book blurbing; and other news.
Actress Krysten Ritter releases thriller novel; McSweeney’s and Casper Mattress launch print magazine; Beth Ann Fennelly on micro-memoirs; and other news.
Five writers over the age of fifty whose debut books were released this year: Jimin Han, Laura Hulthen Thomas, Karen E. Osborne, Tina Carlson, and Peg Alford Pursell. Excerpts of their books are available in 5 Over 50 Reads 2017.
With a new book of nonfiction, Bunk, a new job as director of a leading research center on black culture, and a new role as poetry editor of the New Yorker, Kevin Young is fully engaged in a personal program of moving multitudes.
