At Bloom this week, a spotlight on Pulitzer-Prize winner Paul Harding, whose second novel Enon has just been released. Plus a special treat: Joe Schuster speaks to Harding by phone in this two-part interview.
Audio Conversation With Paul Harding
The Alfar
If you run into trouble in Iceland, blame the elves. 54.4 percent of Icelanders believe in the invisible creatures, and elves cause environmental protest today. "Beliefs in misfortune befalling those who dare to build in elf territory is so widespread and frequent that the Icelandic Road and Coastal Administration has created a five-page 'standard reply' for press inquiries about elves," Ryan Jacobs writes for The Atlantic. Pair with: our essay on Icelandic writer Sjón.
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Godblog Twitter Feed
God’s terse first line in the Book of Genesis — “Let there be light” — was ready-made for the Twitter generation. If only the rest was as crisp, the British novelist Jeanette Winterson recalled thinking, as she began to reckon with that first book for a new theatrical project on the King James Bible. And then it hit her: Maybe God’s wisdom would crackle for a modern audience as Twitter posts of 140 words or less.
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Money, not ethics, ultimately motivates censorship
Ariel Bogle has a good round up over on Moby Lives about Paypal, Amazon, Apple, and censorship in publishing.
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Woolf Tones
Still not sure if you want to keep a diary? Perhaps the testimony of Virginia Woolf can convince you.
Populist Is Popular
"The demagogic spirit of the 'radio priest' Father Charles Coughlin and the 'minister of hate' Gerald L.K. Smith has been reborn in the candidacy of Donald Trump, just as the exhortations of the Louisiana boss and rabble-rouser Huey Long, who declared war on 'the superrich' and proposed a 'Share Our Wealth Society,' all but predicted Bernie Sanders’s attack on 'the billionaire class.'" Examining what political books can tell us about the election season with Sam Tanenhaus at The New York Times.
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Apathy at Fawlt
Fawlt is feeling apathetic, but not about their new issue, with fiction by Brian Evenson & John Sellekaers and Nic Kellman.
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Cheryl Strayed Discovers Her Long Lost Sister
NPR caught up with Wild author Cheryl Strayed to talk about a stranger who had a particularly personal connection with the writer’s book. As it turns out, she was Strayed’s half-sister. (Bonus: we interviewed Strayed for our site last year.)
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