Sex and the City’s Cynthia Nixon has been tapped to play Emily Dickinson in a new biopic from Terence Davies. In a lucky break for that film’s stylists and wardrobe people, the number of extant photographs of Dickinson has recently doubled.
Cynthia Nixon to Play Emily Dickinson
Tuesday New Release Day: Stone, Griffith, Banks, Zweig, O’Connor
Out this week: Death of the Black-Haired Girl by Robert Stone; Hild by Nicola Griffith; A Permanent Member of the Family by Russell Banks; The Collected Stories of Stefan Zweig; and A Prayer Journal by Flannery O’Connor. For more on these and other new releases, go read our Great Second-Half 2013 Book Preview.
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Writers Bloc Series
In Zadie Smith’s introduction to the Writers Bloc series, she writes that the program sought essays “that were not only pious, charitable or analytical but also readable, engaging, exciting.” The essays published by Guernica certainly meet this criteria. I particularly recommend Aleksandar Hemon’s essay on first graders in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
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I Is for Impressive
“It all started with A Is For Alibi, then came B Is For Burglar, C Is For Corpse and on and on through the alphabet.” NPR interviews Sue Grafton about her Kinsey Millhone series, currently spanning 25 letters – the newest and penultimate entry, Y for Yesterday, comes out today – and 35 years. Pair with Ujala Sehgal‘s list of five crime novels where women are the true detectives.
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On The Emotional Dishonesty of Having a Thick Skin
At The Nervous Breakdown, Ronlyn Domingue’s honest and thoughtful “My Horrible New York Times Review” is a must-read for any writer who’s been rejected or ridiculed lately (and, really, who hasn’t been?)
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We Need More Prizes. We Need Better Prizes.
Following the launch of a new £10,000 “innovative” literary prize by Goldsmiths College and the New Statesman, Chad Post takes a look at the current state of American literary awards. His opinion? “America is The Worst for trying to equate popularity with quality.”
Finding Adventure
“I had seen enough movies to know that when a knife is tossed by the hero to someone in need, it lands exactly where it should. So I picked up the knife, and I centered myself. ‘Be the hero,’ I whispered.” Caroline Paul’s The Gutsy Girl: Escapades for Your Life of Epic Adventure, “part memoir, part manifesto, part aspirational workbook,” encourages everyone to add a little more adventure to their lives. Angela Qian writes about the adventure of learning to read in another language.
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Sanitize and Simplify
Recommended reading: The New York Times reports on a growing literary trend – YA nonfiction.
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