According to a new biography of Richard Pryor, the legendary comedian kicked off his career as a teen in Peoria, Illinois, when he starred in a play based on Rumpelstiltskin and “broke the other kids up.” At The Nervous Breakdown, nine choice passages from the book.
“He hasn’t come down since”
Art Like Reading a Good Book
Erica Baum uses found language and blackboards as her canvases. “Looking closely at Baum’s work to intuit such realities is both challenging and rewarding like reading a good book.”
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Kindle Price Drop
Amazon’s response to the iPad? The pricetag for a Kindle has just dropped to $189.
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Asian American Short Story Contest
Hyphen Magazine/Asian American Writers’ Workshop are co-sponsoring a short story contest, judged by Alexander Chee and Jaed Coffin. $1,000 prize and publication in Hyphen, open to all U.S. and Canadian writers of Asian descent. Details here.
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No Longer Science Fiction
“Set in the 2020s and 2030s in a collapsing and crashed America, the Parables books have always seemed incredibly and disturbingly prescient—and in the wake of November 8, 2016 they now seem downright spooky, the actual and accurate history of the future.” How Octavia Butler predicted the present. See also: our consideration of Butler’s novel Kindred.
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FYI: GRH
The editor of the sumptuous Aussie lit-mag Torpedo – a kind of antipodean McSweeney’s – interviews a recent contributor: me (2).
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