Natasha Trethewey will give her inaugural reading as the U.S. Poet Laureate tonight at the Library of Congress. The event is free and open to the public, and some of Trethewey’s work can be found here, here, and here.
Trethewey’s Inaugural Reading
Eating And/Or Reading
“The joy of reading about the meals of others shows that, in many ways, we are simple creatures: by merely looking upon someone else eating we can feel better fed.” In the New Yorker, Bee Wilson considers the “Pleasures of the Literary Meal,” something Seth Sawyers wrote about for the Millions last year.
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Writers on Writing
Recommended listening: Writers on Writing, a playlist of TED talks from NPR that pair well with our own Nick Ripatrazone‘s essay on “vertical writing” and Michelle Huneven‘s breakdown of “The Trouble With Writing.”
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Voice to the Voiceless
“Even though journalism is a good profession, for me it was very constraining. It focuses on the surface, banalities, events, and I wanted to spend a longer time talking to people in depth, and to ask them about truly important things, like love, death, and war.” This interview with Svetlana Alexievich at The Nation is fantastic. Check out our own profile/interview with Alexievich from earlier this summer.
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On Turning “Perhaps” into Certainty
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Berlin Stories, Redux
“Home is the place where there is someone who does not wish you any pain.” Stop what you’re doing and go read this interview with Darryl Pinckney, author of Black Deutschland, over at The Rumpus. Here’s a great Millions essay on Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin Stories, which serves as a sort of (misguided) guide map for the protagonist of Black Deutschland.