At Slate, Chad Harbach weighs in on the MFA.
MFA vs. NYC?
“The Snowy Day” Gets a Stamp Series
Iconic illustrations from Ezra Jack Keats‘ The Snowy Day will become part of the United States Postal Service’s “Forever” series. The four stamps will feature Peter, the little brown boy in his famous red snowsuit, in various states of play. See also: our own Edan Lepucki on children’s books and their grown-up counterparts.
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Becoming What You Write
Recommended Reading: A conversation between Year in Reading alumna Rebecca Makkai and Louise Erdrich at The Chicago Review of Books. You could also read our interview with Makkai following the release of The Hundred-Year House.
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Salton Sea as Holy Land
“Every journal is a confessional. If it’s in the first person, it cannot help but be. Unless the author of it lies to himself—and that makes it even more of a confessional. For some reason, travel brings out confessions one would never make at home. I am trying to draw the rake of my journal over the landscape. Perhaps I will uncover something.” Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s new collection of travel journals, Writing Across the Landscape, is out now. Travel on back to The Millions for Kate McCahill’s essay on traveling with books.
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Lambda Award Winners Announced
The Lambda Literary Award winners were announced, including Under the Udala Tree author Chinelo Okparanta, Dawn Lundy Martin, and Hasan Namir.
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Remembering Sendak
In remembrance of Maurice Sendak: a look at his life in pictures, a video of Sendak speaking on his 80th birthday, a 2006 profile from The New Yorker, a 2012 interview with Stephen Colbert, an illustrated conversation between Sendak and Art Spiegelman, and a touch of comedy from The Onion.
Hiddleston’s High Rise
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Philip Roth Disses Fiction
Philip Roth, one of America’s most distiguished and prolific novelists, tells the Financial Times that he no longer reads fiction. Why not? “I don’t know,” he says. “I wised up.”