We’re in the thick of National Poetry Month now, and Tweetspeak has a full round-up of ways to participate online. In particular, I think the Virginia Quarterly Review’s “Instapoem” series is especially rad. (Gee, I wonder why.)
Instapoetry Month
Best Food Books
Food writing fans: In the Chicago Tribune, several top chefs name their favorite books about food. (Thanks Laurie)
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Young Lions Fiction Award Finalists
The New York Public Library announced their eighteenth annual Young Lions Fiction Award, which is “given annually to an American writer age 35 or younger for either a novel or a collection of short stories.” The 2018 finalists are: Lesley Nneka Arimah‘s What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky, Venita Blackburn‘s Black Jesus and Other Superheroes, Gabe Habash‘s Stephen Florida, Emily Ruskovich‘s Idaho, and Jenny Zhang‘s Sour Heart. From our archives: Habash and Zhang‘s 2017 Year in Reading entries.
Lingua Donna
In honor of Women in Translation month, The Guardian asks 10 female translators and writers about the work that inspires them, with answers ranging from Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck to Valeria Luiselli’s The Story of My Teeth, which we reviewed when it came out in the States. Pair with this survey of the work of Argentine writer Leila Guerriero.
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Walt Whitman: Bottled and Brewed
Bell's Brewery, in Kalamazoo Mich., is set to release a series of seven beers in tribute to Walt Whitman's famous poetry collection Leaves of Grass.
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Who Should Readers Root For In The Super Bowl?
Need a team to root for during today’s Super Bowl? Might I suggest cheering on the team that represents a city angling to become America’s second UNESCO City of Literature? (Related: A few months back, Krakow, Poland, became the seventh city to join the UNESCO bunch.)
Allen Ginsberg, Beat Historian
“It’s not often one gets the opportunity to take a course on a major literary movement taught by a founding member of that movement,” but Allen Ginsberg‘s lectures on “the literary history of the Beats” are now available online via Open Culture.
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She Has Haunted Me in Spectacular Ways
“Lillian haunted me when she was alive. And she has haunted me since her death in July 2015. And she has haunted me in spectacular ways since I published my memoir a month ago.” Sherman Alexie has cancelled the rest of a book tour to promote his new memoir about his relationship with his mother, reports The Guardian. See also: our interview with Ellen Forney, who illustrated Alexie’s National Book Award-winning YA novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.
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#NPR’s cooperating with #Spotify to spread #poetweets to the airwaves. Honored to be among those asked to record one. @Boiarski