At FiveChapters this week, you can read an excerpt of Sam Lipsyte’s forthcoming novel, The Ask.
Sam Lipsyte’s The Ask
The Summer People
Over at Longreads, Carrie Frye writes on the homonymous short stories of Shirley Jackson and Year in Reading alumna Kelly Link. Also check out this Millions interview with Link.
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Vanishing Point’s Editorial Fellowship
Vanishing Point, which I’ve praised in the past, is offering an editorial fellowship in digital documentary publishing, and it’s open to people who live near Duke’s Center for Documentary Studies, as well as to those who live far away.
“Thousand-watt sadness”
The most depressing favorable review of a TV show you’ll read this year, LA Review of Books shares why “Catfish: The TV Show” is so poignant and so very sad.
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“Silent and spotless”
At The Nervous Breakdown, an excerpt of Still Writing, the new book by Year in Reading alum Dani Shapiro. The excerpt comes on the heels of one of the site’s trademark self-interviews, in which the author laments of herself as interviewer, “You don’t pull any punches, do you?” (Related: our own Hannah Gersen talked with Shapiro about her book.)
Route Nine’s Alumni Omnibus: 50 Years in the Making
To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the University of Massachusetts Amherst MFA Program, the school’s literary magazine – Route Nine – gathered work from over 80 alumni to create a special Alumni Omnibus issue. The collection just went online recently, and it’s tremendous.
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Facebook’s Most Popular Titles
We’ve mentioned the “What books have stayed with you?” social media trend before, and now Facebook has tallied up the most popular titles by country. The results are both exactly what you would expect – The Little Prince ranks high in France, One Hundred Years of Solitude fairs well in Latin America – and a little surprising as the Harry Potter series tops the list in countries ranging from India to Italy to Brazil.