Busting borders: the gut-punch fiction of Don Winslow
The American crime writer Don Winslow opened the 2019 Toronto International Festival of authors with an insightful conversation about writing, genre, and the U.S. war on drugs.
A portrait of the artist as a dead man: controversial proposal floated to repatriate the remains of James Joyce
Two Dublin city councillors have a plan to exhume the bones of the great modernist writer and return them to his birthplace.
Anatomy of melancholy: Kevin Barry’s Night Boat to Tangier
Kevin Barry’s third novel features two career criminals waiting at a seedy Spanish port for the arrival of the estranged daughter of one of them.
Harold Bloom, proponent of the literary sublime, dies at age 89
Harold Bloom antagonized academics and cultural theorists, but remained a staunch advocate of transcendence through literature.
On regarding the lives of others: Benjamin Moser’s biography of Susan Sontag
Benjamin Moser’s biography of Susan Sontag presents its subject as a mass of contradictions.
Watch Your Head addresses climate crisis through poetry, art
Poet and editor Kathryn Mockler’s latest project is an online call to arms around the ongoing climate emergency.
Finding the words: Sister Language by Christina Baillie and Martha Baillie
Christina Baillie and Martha Baillie have created a unique dual text that examines the linguistic manifestations of schizophrenia.
Copy of D.H. Lawrence novel from landmark obscenity trial remains in U.K.
A copy of D.H. Lawrence’s notorious novel, marked up by a British judge’s wife, will remain in the U.K. following a successful crowdfunding campaign.
George Elliott Clarke on the insidious history of Blackface in North America
Former Parliamentary Poet Laureate George Elliott Clarke provides an incisive critique of pernicious historical acts of racial burlesque.
Long and short: Ducks, Newburyport and the art of the aphorism
In addition to being a sprawling and complex work of fiction, Lucy Ellmann’s Ducks, Newburyport offers a master class in the art of the aphorism.