The National Book Foundation announces the 5 Under 35 Selections for 2009.
5 under 35
Open Letters Reborn
Open Letters Monthly has relaunched with a smart-looking new site and three new blogs: Like Fire, stevereads, and the Walt Whitman-focused Whitman’s Blog.
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Audio Ginsberg
This past week saw the release of the final volume in Holy Soul Jelly Roll: Poems & Songs 1949-1993, a collection of recordings—some of which never before released—by Allen Ginsberg. This volume contains the “stunning 1956 Berkeley Town Hall reading of Ginsberg’s seminal poem ‘Howl.’” The volumes are for sale on iTunes, but you can also listen to an “8 song sampler” over on OpenCulture for free.
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Your Okay
Sick of getting corrected for tiny grammatical mistakes? Turns out you may not be a forgetful person after all. According to a cognitive psychologist at the University of Wisconsin, our brains have a tendency to fall into bad grammatical habits, even when we know the rules we’re trying to follow. In The Washington Post, Andrew Heisel investigates. You could also read Fiona Maazel on the specter of commercial grammar.
Blood Roots
“[W]e are and we are not who our blood roots predetermine us to be.” Over at Electric Literature, Sion Dayson talks with our own Sonya Chung about race, writing, and her new novel, The Loved Ones, which is one of the books we’re most excited to read this month.
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