Mike Sonksen takes a look at both Tinfish and Bamboo Ridge Press, as well as a handful of influential Hawaiian writers, as he investigates “Maui, Pacific Literature, and the Aloha Spirit.”
The Epicenter of Pacific Literature
Copterboy
As some of you may have heard, a handful of pioneering companies are trying to use flying robots in place of cars for deliveries. In the Bay Area, the geniuses behind Tacocopter are blazing a new path for restaurants, while in France, the postal service in Auvergne is working on a system for newspapers. (Fingers crossed that somebody will try this with lit mags.)
●
●
Tuesday New Releases
Among the books hitting shelves this week are Pulitzer winner and New Yorker staffer Louis Menand’s The Marketplace of Ideas: Reform and Resistance in the American University and memoirist and poet Nick Flynn’s The Ticking is the Bomb. Also new, Melville House is putting out a novella, Union Jack, by Nobel laureate Imre Kertész, and NYRB Classics has published Fortunes of War: The Balkan Trilogy a novel by Olivia Manning based on her time in Eastern Europe during World War II. Rachel Cusk provides an introduction to the edition.
●
●
Bradbury’s Legacy
As Ray Bradbury’s 90th birthday approaches, Slate explores why his stories have seeped into the culture.
●
●
AIP calls for Mortensen’s resignation
Months after 60 Minutes aired its damning profile of Central Asia Institute’s founder Greg Mortensen (Three Cups of Tea), the American Institute for Philanthropy has called for his resignation. The call comes on the heels of Jon Krakauer‘s investigation into Mortensen’s use of the CAI’s finances.
●
●
Plus He Took a Selfie
We’re not the only ones looking back on favorite pieces of the year. At The Paris Review Daily, a Gchat (yes, Gchat) with George Saunders, who corresponded with Katherine Bernard on Valentine’s Day.
●
●
Royals
Make of this what you will, but when Lorde first read Year in Reading alum Wells Tower’s Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned, it struck her as “the best collection [she’d] ever read.” Her interview with Tavi Gevinson in Rookie reveals that she also loves Raymond Carver and Claire Vaye Watkins.
●
●