On Friday Twitter announced their new Twitter Fiction Festival, a “virtual storytelling celebration.” The festival will feature “creative experiments in storytelling from authors around the world,” and you can submit story proposals over here.
Twitter Fiction Festival
The Naval Academy’s Reading List for Life
What does it mean that so many faculty members at the United States Naval Academy have recommended Ayn Rand’s work on the “Reading List For Life?”
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King James
"He is the king, after all, and kings don’t lead revolutions. They rule wary of them." Just about everything that Rowan Ricardo Phillips has to say about basketball is recommended reading at this point, and this piece on Lebron James and kingship is no different. This older piece on Steph Curry and the sustainability of brilliance is an early highlight.
For the Viral Good
As you may have heard, Twitter went public last week, which means a lot of people are trying to figure out just what its IPO means for social media. Over at n+1, Benjamin Kunkel proposes that social media, by its very nature, cannot be profitable, and thus should be administered by the state as a public good.
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DFW Roundup
From the person who brought you Infinite Boston comes Infinite Atlas, an interactive map of the places that make up Infinite Jest, and, for the truely devoted, the Infinite Map, a framable print version of that atlas. Page-Turner offers an extended preview of D.T. Max's Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story. Maria Popova highlights a few of the signature DFW words that he adopted from his mother.
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Cellpoems Poetry and Reviews
Poems and reviews in 140 characters or less. NY Book Bench has a great article about Cellpoems, and how they fit into the swiftly changing literary landscape of today.
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Much Ado About Burgers
Exhibit A: Joseph R Worthen’s ongoing series investigating the state of “Fast Food Hamburgers in the Southeastern United States.” (Parts Two and Three, too.) Exhibit B: Blake Butler’s nauseating (yet hypnotic) “Review of the New Wendy's Pretzel Burger.”
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You’ll Never Believe What Happens Next
If you’re looking for some great poetry, check out these classic poems that will change your life, from Robert Frost’s “This Man Stops By Woods On a Snowy Eve… You Won’t Believe What Happens Next!” to Gwendolyn Brooks’s “We Real Cool… and You Can Be Too After These 5 Easy Tricks.” Pair with this Millions piece on poetry for people who hate poetry.