Among the institutions that have just won MacArthur Awards are The Moth, for promoting the art and craft of storytelling, and the Center for Investigative Reporting, for engaging the public and sparking policy change.
The Moth Wins MacArthur Award
Ramsquaddled and Pixellated
Are you familiar with the term, “clatterdevengeance”? It’s the favorite word of Jonathon Green, purveyor of the internet’s newest dirty slang dictionary, which seeks to document some of the more hilarious (and uncouth) experiments in the English language.
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This is Your Brain on Austen
What does your brain look like when you read a Jane Austen novel? One group of Stanford researches is using an MRI machine to find out.
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On Adaptation
Recommended Reading: Alice Walker and Colm Tóibín discuss adaptations of their work for film and stage. Pair with our article on breaking down the Oscar for adapted screenplay.
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“Louche but not bohemian”
In January, I wrote about the release of William Styron’s letters, which reveal, among other things, that Styron requested a book on Nat Turner after visiting “the most enormous house [he’d] ever seen” in Cornwall. At the Times Literary Supplement, you can read more.
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Filing Fees and Free Shipping
“As I got older, the Nigerian scam artist turned into a meme. The ‘Nigerian prince’ became a joke tossed around by white people with the same ease that ‘Italian mobster’ jokes were likely tossed around in the ‘70s—but aided now by the internet. Whenever I came across casual references to my people as scam artists, I’d wince. There was more to us than the scam. Hell—there was even more to the scam.” On how novelist Teju Cole helped Ijeoma Oluo make peace with the Nigerian scam artist.
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