Herta Müller’s Nobel Lecture is now available in translation.
Herta Müller’s Nobel Lecture
Expiration Date
“Echoes are etched into the pages thanks to margin-scrawled notes, a yellowed coffee splatter or sticky peanut-butter-and-jelly fingerprints.” In her project “Expired,” photographer Kerry Mansfield documents the life of library books. We suggest pairing The Guardian's gallery of her photos with our own Jacob Lambert's “Open Letter to the Person Who Wiped Boogers on My Library Book.”
The Same Grace
"I do not wish to presume. I want to love. Oh God please make my mind clear." It's no secret that Flannery O'Connor was both an incredible writer and a devout Catholic. The New Yorker has just published a few excerpts from her Prayer Journal which are characteristically beautiful whether or not you're a believer.
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Appearing Elsewhere
Prospero, the new arts and culture blog of The Economist, has just posted my piece on literary Brooklyn, which explains how New York's trendiest borough has become a vertically integrated factory for the production of fiction and poetry.
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Occupy Wall Street, the Coloring Book
Wondering the best way to explain Occupy Wall Street to your 9-year-old? How about a coloring book? Out today, Occupy is a 36-page coloring book depicting the events and opinions surrounding the Occupy movement.
2011 in Physics Books
Every year brings a fresh new crop of popular books on physics and cosmology, or so they say. 2011 was no exception, featuring books on dark matter and dark energy, the Large Hadron Collider, time, the multiverse, cosmic mortality, a bit of history, biography, and even a celebration of "fringe physics." Here is a list of top ten picks.
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“MFA Thesis (and/or Life Reevaluation)”
Did your MFA program offer impractical courses like "Problems in Modern Fiction"? At the Ploughshares blog, Rebecca Makkai offers some suggestions for more useful classes, such as "Introduction to Despair," "Pretending You’re Talking to Terry Gross When You’re Alone in the Car," and "The Art of the Flirty Author Photo Grimace." Pair with: Our interview with Makkai.
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