The Atlantic interviews Erin Gruwell, a teacher whose methods for teaching her students about prejudice became the basis of a book (and subsequent movie) called The Freedom Writers. Named after a group of bus-riding civil rights activists, the students in her classes wrote lengthy journal entries — many of them relating to their own personal traumas — in order to compare them with diaries by historical figures. Writing journals, Gruwell says, helped her students learn to like schoolwork.
Reasons Not to Throw Out Your Diary
Personalized Postcards from Your Favorite Authors
Help support a nonprofit literary magazine and you might win a handwritten letter for yourself or a loved one.
●
●
●
Covering Eco
Following up on a contest to redesign the cover of Lolita, Venus Febriculosa is at it again with a contest to redesign the cover of Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose. The prize this time is a whopping $1,000.
●
●
Leave It To TV
Recommended Reading: this piece from Electric Literature on how 80s television broached topics that we’re still afraid to talk about today. Here’s a bonus piece on reality television, as well.
●
●
Curiosities
Who killed the literary critic?: “In the age of blogging, great critics appear to be on life support. Salon’s book reviewers discuss snobbery, how to make criticism fun and the need for cultural gatekeepers.” The ongoing, seemingly never ending discussion of the death of literature and criticism continues, though Salon’s interest in “how to make criticism fun” is a promising sign.Online used book marketplace AbeBooks looks at the yearbook collecting subculture. The most expensive yearbook to every be sold on the site? The Ole Miss Yearbook 1921 containing “William Faulkner’s poem, ‘Nocturne,’ in facsimile of the author’s stylized printing over a two-page spread along with several Faulkner drawings.”Buzz presents the Nixon Rock on his Madonna of the Toast blog.Carolyn has been on an enviable literary-themed roadtrip. Luckily we can read along at home.
●
●
Poetry for Dummies
“To fully understand poetry, familiarize yourself with the elements of a poem, such as meter, which is 3.28 feet.” Katie Burgess teaches us how to properly read a poem for The Rumpus’ Funny Women column.
●
●