You Must Go and Win author Alina Simone‘s essay “Why Do Russians Hate Ice?” has caused quite an uproar in the comments section.
The Ice Heats Up
Google Hangout with Gene Luen Yang
If you like comic books, diverse characters and / or our recent article on Gene Luen Yang, pay close attention to the internet on Monday afternoon. Yang will be part of a Google Hangout on the 4th to talk about his book Boxers & Saints with a reporter TIME for Kids and BookUp, two outlets for young readers, and the chat can be streamed live beginning at 2pm EST.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Adichie, Knausgaard, Brown
New in fiction this week is Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah. The second volume of Karl Knausgaard’s My Struggle hits American shores (read about Volume One). Oh yeah, and that Dan Brown guy has a book out.
Ben Marcus’s Language
“Language starts to shut down the strength and power and strangeness of what it means to be a person in the world.” At The Rumpus, Ben Marcus discusses how he uses language in his writing and his new short story collection, Leaving the Sea (featured in our 2014 book preview.) Pair with: Our own Adam Boretz’s interview with Marcus and our review of The Flame Alphabet.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Moore, Danticat, Wright, Loyd
Out this week: The Novel: An Alternative History by Steven Moore; Claire of the Sea Light by Edwidge Danticat; F, a new book of poems by Franz Wright; and The Affairs of Others by Amy Grace Loyd, which Katie Rogin reviewed for us last week. For more on these and other interesting titles, go read our Great Second-Half 2013 Book Preview.
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Gwendolyn Brooks’s Archives Headed to Urbana-Champaign
The literary archives of Gwendolyn Brooks – the first African-American to win a Pulitzer Prize – are headed to the University of Illinois Rare Book and Manuscript Library. The haul amounts to more than “150 boxes stuffed with manuscripts, drafts, revisions, correspondence, scrapbooks, clippings, homemade chapbooks in which Brooks neatly handwrote her earliest (unpublished) poems, and heavy bronze awards ensconced in velvet-lined boxes collected later in her career.”
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Sergio De La Pava on Boxing
Did Garth Risk Hallberg’s profile of Sergio De La Pava, enigmatic author of A Naked Singularity, whet your appetite for a taste of his writing? Well, check out this excerpt from the book over at The Classical.