“Suddenly I couldn’t believe/you have to put it back,/must be intelligent,/bring sandwich money,/whether British or American.” Three new poems by John Ashbery.
“No one remembers Mr Coffee Nerves”
Black Balloon’s Horatio Nelson Prize
Black Balloon has announced a new Horatio Nelson fiction prize, and the terms are pretty sweet. There’s no entry fee, and one winner will receive $5,000 and a book deal. Details can be found here.
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DFW, Edited
The changes between the transcription of David Foster Wallace reading ‘A fragment of a longer thing’ in 2000 and the version of that story ‘Backbone’ as published in the recent New Yorker. (via The Paris Review)
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5 Women Under 35
For the first time ever, this year’s National Book Foundation “5 Under 35” winners are all women. Congrats to Molly Antopol (The UnAmericans), NoViolet Bulawayo (We Need New Names, which was also just shortlisted for The Booker Prize), Amanda Coplin (The Orchardist), Daisy Hildyard (Hunters in the Snow), and Merritt Tierce (Love Me Back).
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Harry Potter on Kindle
Pottermore is open for business. J.K. Rowling’s boy wizard books are now available on Kindle for the first time ever.
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Charlie and the Chocolate Bookstore
Chocolate can cure a lot of things but what about the ailing bookstore? Belgian researchers have found that bookstores that smell like chocolate boost sales, especially of romance novels. What about bacon?
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In This Here Place
“In this here place, we flesh; … Love it. Love it hard. Yonder they do not love your flesh. They despise it. They don’t love your eyes; they’d just as soon pick em out. No more do they love the skin on your back. Yonder they flay it.” Toni Morrison‘s Beloved as featured in a powerful essay by Allyson Hobbs for The Root about black life, Philando Castile, “and the trauma that remains.” See also: a consideration of parallels between Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize-winning epic and The Odyssey.
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