Recommended Reading: Mai Der Vang’s striking poem about displacement “Light From a Burning Citadel” at The Missouri Review. “Once this highland was our birthplace. Once we were children of kings.”
Poetry of Displacement
“The petty savageries of family”
Recommended Reading: Laura Bogart on the weird art of memoir writing. (h/t The Rumpus)
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Drunk Writing
Recommended Reading: Michelle Dean writes for The New Republic about the image of the tortured, alcoholic writer — and the “different kind of weight attached to a woman drinker.”
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The Novel Doppelganger
Are you familiar with the concept of the novel doppelgänger? If not you should read this advice column, especially if you're an aspiring author. What are the odds??
Even more Girls
Okay, so earlier this week I mentioned Emily Nussbaum's excellent profile of Lena Dunham for New York Magazine. Now Lorrie Moore's written one too, for The New Yorker blog. The short piece, as you might imagine, is a near perfect meeting of author and subject; who could be better at writing about Girls?
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“Which I respect more than bourgeois liberalism”
Much fuss was made about Barack Obama’s ex-girlfriends this week, as an excerpt from David Maraniss’ forthcoming Barack Obama: The Story was published in Vanity Fair. Of course, we sophisticated book readers care less about the man’s old flames than we do his literary pursuits, right? That’s why Mr. President’s analysis of T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Wasteland” is so interesting.
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Whiting Award Recipients 2016
This year’s Whiting Award winners have been announced. The award recognizes “ten emerging writers of fiction, nonfiction, drama, and poetry, and are based on the criteria of early-career achievement and the promise of superior work to come.” The winners include Catherine Lacey (of Nobody Is Ever Missing); Alice Sola Kim (of Mothers, Lock Up Your Daughters Because They Are Terrifying); and Ocean Vuong (of Night Sky with Exit Wounds, among other books).
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Joy & Wonder & Goshawks
"Joy and wonder. That’s at the heart of what I love about the natural world. If you’re receptive to it, it does something to human minds that nothing else can do." Electric Literature talks with Helen MacDonald about living with, and like, a goshawk. Pair with Madeleine Larue's Millions review of MacDonald's H is for Hawk.
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