In the wake of the Sandusky scandal, the Penn State alumni mag Penn Stater couldn’t ignore the news. The dark, shattered cover is not what you typically see from booster-ish alumni magazines.
When an Alumni Mag Covers Bad News
McCann and Hemon in Conversation
The kind folks at the PEN American Center recorded Colum McCann’s recent conversation with author and soccer ace Aleksandar Hemon. Listen to the pair discuss the Western distinction between fiction and non-fiction, and also the hypothetical merits of “watching a potato.”
Transcending Annihilation with Madeleine L’Engle
Abigail Santamaria examines how the 1918 flu pandemic and threat of nuclear war influenced Madeleine L’Engle’s writing.
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Kickstarter: Blessing or Curse?
Is Kickstarter a viable tool for self-published authors, or is it instead “a bit of a nightmare?”
Here We Go, I Guess
Bret Easton Ellis was apparently serious when he said he wanted to adapt Fifty Shades of Grey for the big screen. He even has a cast and director in mind.
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On American Sonnets
Stephanie Burt writes about Terrance Hayes, Wanda Coleman's American Sonnets, confinement, and the mechanics of lyric poetry.
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A New Generation’s Mockingbird
To Kill a Mockingbird is a timeless book, but until now it’s only been in the dated medium of print. However, Harper Lee announced that she is allowing her novel to become an ebook and digital audiobook. “I’m still old-fashioned. I love dusty old books and libraries. I am amazed and humbled that Mockingbird has survived this long. This is Mockingbird for a new generation.”
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Can’t We Go Back to Page One
A memoir by Winnie-the-Pooh author A.A. Milne shows a writer frustrated at how his creation undermined his adult literary cred. Republished 70 years after it went out of print, It’s Too Late Now reveals a trapped Milne wishing for more control over his own narrative: “I wanted to escape from [children’s books] as I had once wanted to escape from Punch; as I have always wanted to escape. In vain. England expects the writer, like the cobbler, to stick to his last.”
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