Just in time for crawfish season (and ruined outfits as a result of crawfish season), The Oxford American‘s launched its newest column, Parish Chic, brought to you by L. Kasimu Harris. It’s meant to prominently showcase the beaucoup styles on display in New Orleans, Harris’ hometown. You can read about the project’s background and inspiration over at Gambit: The Best of New Orleans.
Haute Bayou
Tarantino on Writing
Say what you want about Quentin Tarantino; the man thinks like a writer. You can hear him doing so out loud on the current episode of KCRW's The Treatment, with Elvis Mitchell.
●
●
Football Book Club: Lawrence Wright’s ‘Going Clear’
This week, Football Book Club will be reading Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief by Lawrence Wright and posting essays about Brain Fever by Kimiko Hahn -- its selection from last week — and life without the NFL. Going Clear was a National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award finalist and has been turned into a documentary by HBO.
●
●
Growing Up
It’s a common trope in writing courses that young artists need a dose of childlike creativity. Self-help books for people with writer’s block are filled with callbacks to childhood interests. But is it possible, as Tasha Golden argues at the Ploughshares blog, that idealizing children isn't the answer to our problems?
●
●
“Cue the 8-bit music”
Recommended Reading: Two poems by S.P. MacIntyre.
●
●
EU Literature Prizewinners Announced
Winners of the EU Prize for Literature were announced at the Frankfurt Book Fair.
●
●
YiR Alums In Spook
Are you familiar with Spook magazine founded and edited by Jason Parham? It focuses on promoting artists of color and their work. This month the fiction issue, was released and it features work from beloved writers (and Year in Reading alums!) Junot Diaz, Angela Flournoy, and Vinson Cunningham. Along with YiR favorite Justin Torres. You can buy it here! Perfect read for the snowy weekend.
Philip Roth’s Newark
As a way of commemorating Philip Roth’s 80th birthday, the Newark Preservation and Landmarks committee is offering a $35 bus tour called “Philip Roth’s Newark.” Visitors will get a tour of “places recalled in Mr. Roth’s books” such as Washington Park, the Essex County Courthouse and “various spots in the Weequahic neighborhood where Mr. Roth was born and raised.”
●
●