New Yorkers: tonight you can party with the likes of Sam Lipsyte, Colson Whitehead, Amber Tamblyn, Andrew McCarthy, Nato Green, Nick Flynn, Janine Brito, K. Flay and a whole bunch of the writers for The Rumpus. All it takes is $10 at the door. Festivities begin at Brooklyn’s Public Assembly at 7pm. Details can be found here.
Come Out and Party with The Rumpus
Will Hoge
There's a great free download at iTunes right now: Country rocker and (some say) Tom Petty-sound-alike Will Hoge's new single "Even If It Breaks Your Heart." If you like what you hear, Hoge is also on tour right now.
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Disturbing the Book Reviews
Over at The New York Times, our own Garth Risk Hallberg reviews A. M. Homes' May We Be Forgiven. And in October, so did we.
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Book and Bed
Who’s ready for a trip to Tokyo? Sadie Stein at The Paris Review breaks the lid on a veritable Shangri-La for book lovers, a quasi-bunkhouse known as Book and Bed. Book and Bed is a bunkhouse-slash-bookstore that doesn’t actually sell books. Instead, they have a number of rather spartan beds built inside row after row of bookshelves. Their noble goal is also a simple one; to offer “an experience shared by everyone at least once: the blissful instant of falling asleep while reading.”
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The Year of Only Publishing Women
"When author Kamila Shamsie challenged the book industry to publish only women in 2018 to help address a gender imbalance in literature, just one publisher took up the challenge." And Other Stories, an English publisher who publish translations and English language books, has decided to only publish women writers in 2018, according to the BBC. Pair with: an essay by our own Marie Myung-Ok Lee about the visibility and privacy of women writers.
Willa Cather on Mark Twain
An early example of the literary take-down. Willa Cather on Mark Twain: "He is not a reader nor a thinker nor a man who loves art of any kind."
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“My body belongs to me; / to others its mastery.”
Landays are traditional two-line folk poems, and they are particularly popular among Afghan women these days. Recently Poetry magazine dedicated an issue to the short verses, and Dowser has a behind-the-scenes look at how the issue was put together. Previously, New York Times Magazine caught up with some members of Mirman Baheerm, a women’s literary society based in Kabul.
Love Par Avion
Paravion Press, a small press born in a small Greek island's bookshop, print postcard-sized editions of short stories that are designed to be sent by mail, complete with a page for your correspondence and an envelope. To celebrate their Valentine's publication of Katherine Mansfield's "Feuille d'Album," they're holding a Romantic Haiku Challenge, whose winner will receive a free copy.