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Recommended Reading: Dean Young's poem "Why I Haven’t 'Outgrown Surrealism,' No Matter What That Moron Reviewer Wrote" for Plume.

J.K. Rowling is one of the most successful writers in the world, but the one person she wanted to see her success never got to — her mother. "She never knew about Harry Potter – I started writing it six months before she died, so that is painful. I wish she'd known," she said during an interview with BBC Radio 4. She discussed her mother's death, multiple sclerosis, rugby, and more when she guest edited an edition of "Woman's Hour."

This essay in the Times Literary Supplement on Kurt Vonnegut's "strangely central place in American fiction despite his occasional insistence on his own marginality" is certainly worth a read.