“Women writers and writers of color don’t really have the luxury of being known simply as writers. There’s always a qualification,” Roxane Gay writes for The Nation. She ponders what it means to be a “black woman writer” and concludes that we should view diversity as a search for “urgent, unheard stories.”
The Black Woman Writer
Get Yer Free Books Right Here
“This year, Free Comic Book Day turns sixteen years old. The good news: It can drive itself to swim practice now!” NPR’s Monkey See blog provides an irreverent and useful guide to Free Comic Book Day, which is tomorrow, May 6th. “When you read a comic, you are accepting a direct message from one singular honest soul,” Paul Morton wrote in our own pages a few years back.
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Viral Poetry
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English-ish
Recommended Viewing: this video that shows you how different languages sound to foreigners who don’t understand a word. (And yes, it includes both American and British English.) (h/t Language Lab)
Truly A Random House
In 1969, Random House’s Book of the Month Club offered members an edition of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland illustrated by Salvador Dalí. (You can view the full collection here.) Forty-three years later, the publisher had a mail delivery experience that was almost equally surreal.
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Old Favorites
Looking for more thoughts on My Life in Middlemarch to supplement today’s interview? At Salon, Laura Miller reviews Rebecca Mead’s book, which she calls a “moving demonstration” of Middlemarch’s power. (You could also read Adelle Waldman’s Year in Reading piece about the novel.)
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“I’m thousands of miles away, and you can’t get to me”
The Yale Literary Magazine caught up with the reclusive author Denis Johnson to discuss the poets who made him want to write poetry, his favorite mass cultural product, and the chief reason he avoids giving interviews.
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Delicious Reads
Attention Los Angeles-based readers and eaters! On Tuesday evening, June 29, 2010, Michelle Huneven and Samantha Peale will be at Canele in Atwater Village to celebrate the paperback releases of their latest novels (Blame and The American Painter, Emma Dial, respectively.) Food from the books will be served–the 3-course dinner is only $34. Skylight will be selling the books.
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