A Massachusetts mom said police went too far when they paid her and her 5-year-old daughter a visit for failing to return their library books on time.
5-Year-Old Library Thief
That One Verboten Phrase
At the Ploughshares blog, Erinrose Mager interviews Year in Reading alum Rick Moody, who talks about his classes at NYU and why he prefers “the mentorship model” of teaching writing over the workshop model. (Related: our founder C. Max Magee reviewed Moody’s book The Diviners back in 2006).
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Food Book Fair
Hey! Fans of Kickstarter (or possibly KickStumbler?) wouldn’t you like to help finance “the world’s first ever Food Book Fair that will bring together food publications from around the world alongside dynamic event programming.”
Appearing Elsewhere
My piece in memory of novelist and rapier-tongued pundit Gore Vidal, who died Tuesday, appears on Prospero, the online arts & culture publication of The Economist.
Appearing Elsewhere
Want to get a little background on The Millions? Yours truly is interviewed at the Blog Ads blog today.
From Flop to Top
Patrick deWitt, author of The Sisters Brothers (which our own Mark O’Connell reviewed last October), expected Harry Mathews’ novel The Journalist to be a “terrible flop,” but soon found it was “every bit as great as Mathews’ more celebrated novels.”
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P.S.
The summer issue of Prairie Schooner has a short story of mine in it, as well as other good stuff, for most of which a subscription is required. You don’t need one, however, to read this short interview (very much in keeping with the Where We Write theme).
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Authorship and Entitlement
A white male poet recently revealed his controversial strategy of using an Asian pseudonym to place his poems, which were eventually selected for inclusion in the Best American Poetry anthology for 2015. Brian Spears writes for The Rumpus about the complications of diversity in publishing, Affirmative Action, and the ethics of poetry submission systems.
CSI: Poetry Edition
An international group of forensic experts studying the poet Pablo Neruda‘s remains, which were ordered exhumed in 2013, says he didn’t die of cancer, as the Nobel laureate’s official cause of death states. The question remains: was he poisoned? And if you want to see how Neruda lived, perhaps you might enjoy this tour of writers’ houses.