In The Morning News, Jessica Francis Kane asks where is the line drawn between literary fiction and historical fiction; why is historical fiction maligned; and what happens when you write a novel and one of the characters attends your reading?
Why is historical fiction maligned?
A Call to Action
After our plea to lift The Bluest Eye‘s recent ban, The Nation has also come to Toni Morrison’s defense. “This pervasive sexual violence is reality for tens of thousands of students, a reality the Ohio Board of Ed is looking to whitewash with this latest censorship drive,” Peter Rothberg writes.
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Or, Like Something Out of Kafka
In their latest Trend Watch, Merriam-Webster announced they’ve been seeing more searches for “Kafkaesque,” a spike they attribute to British publishers writing about Booker winner Han Kang. Since the word is so overused, it’s worthwhile to ask: just what does it actually mean now, anyway? Allison Flood tries to pin it down at The Guardian.
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Two Must Read Poets Converse
Eve Ewing recently released her debut poetry collection, Electric Arches, and we dubbed it one of our must-read poetry books last month. Year in Reading alum (and another Millions favorite) Kiese Laymon called her for a Guernica magazine interview and the result is a wonderful discussion on shea butter, Jordans, writing with young people as her primary audience and Assata Shakur as a literary inspiration.
Two books for $22 at Open Letter
To celebrate their thirteen-month anniversary, Open Letter Books is having a sale. Buy any two books from their catalog for $22, and you are also entered to win a free subscription for a full year of their titles. Don’t know where to start? Their books include Vilnius Poker, touted as the preeminent Lithuanian novel of the past twenty years, as well as Dubravka Ugresic’s formidable collection of essays, Nobody’s Home.
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Literary Gamers
Nabokov played (and frequently wrote about) chess; J.K. Rowling plays Minecraft, though it has yet to appear in any kind of Harry Potter spin-off. And why shouldn’t she? After all, “there’s a long tradition of other authors turning to a variety of such games – mostly as light relief from their vocation, but also sometimes finding writerly inspiration.”
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On Equity in Publishing
Over at Paper Darts, Rachel Charlene Lewis argues that editors must be held accountable for the issue of diversity in publishing. As she explains it, “The fun part about focusing instead on the role of editors is that there is an answer—we need more diverse editors, and we need editors who do the work.”
So Much Depends Upon Firing You
We have finally reached peak Trump. In Hart Seely’s new book Bard of the Deal, three decades of Donald Trump speeches and interviews have been reworked into what the publisher is calling a “treasury of spoken poetry.” One can only hope there’s a poem titled, “Bored With Winning.”
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