Denise Donlon writes on the day MuchMusic rocked the tube. Peter Mansbridge details when baseball player Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier. And Conrad Black outlines a train trip by Canada’s first prime minister. Those are but a few of the essays by well-known Canadian personalities in the new book 100 Days That Changed Canada (HarperCollins Canada), now in stores.
100 Days that Changed Canada
Recommended Reading from Roxane Gay
Book Riot has compiled a list of Roxane Gay’s recommended reads via Twitter. Some of her choices include Citizen by Claudia Rankine, God Help the Child by Toni Morrison, and City on Fire by our own Garth Risk Hallberg. See more books Gay recommends in our Year in Reading column.
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Behind the Beautiful Forevers Headed to the Stage
The National Theater in London plans on adapting Behind the Beautiful Forevers into a stage production, reports John Williams. Don’t miss Paul Morton’s Millions interview with Katherine Boo from last year.
Black Warrior Review Contest
You have the entire month of August to enter Black Warrior Review’s ninth-annual poetry, fiction, and nonfiction contest. All entrants will receive a one year subscription to the magazine, and the winners of each genre will receive a $1,000 prize as well as publication in the Spring/Summer 2014 issue.
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What Scares You
“If what you’re writing doesn’t scare you, you probably ought not be writing it.” The Rumpus interviews Josh Weil, author of The Great Glass Sea.
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Imre Kertész Retires
Hungarian author and 2002 Nobel Prize winner Imre Kertész announced his retirement, reports Nicolas Gary in the French publication ActuaLitté. (Link to Google’s translation into English.) As a “gesture of reconciliation” the Fatelessness author and Holocaust survivor has decided to give nearly 35,000 of his papers to the Academy of Arts in Berlin. Meanwhile, Kertész has recently had several of his shorter works released in handsome Melville House editions. (h/t Hari Kunzru)
Listening to Poems
At The Rumpus, Darcie Dennigan pens a strange and beautiful review of G.C. Waldrep’s new collection of poetry, Archicembalo: “I dreamt that G.C. Waldrep was offering me a tumbler of Pepsi, and amid the soda bubbles were many pills.”
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Lions, and Tigers, and Fords
Recommended Reading: This essay by Muna Mire and Messiah Rhodes on private policing in Detroit, Michigan. These few Millions essays on the Motor City will satisfy your Detroit fix.
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Pickwick Posts
Joshua Cohen, author of the recently published Book of Numbers, will begin writing a serialized, twentieth-century version of Charles Dickens’ Pickwick Papers live and online next week. Beginning October 12 at 1pm, viewers can watch Cohen spend five days reimagining the book and will be able to offer criticism that may affect the ending.