Recommended Listening: “I wanted to rescue the wicked stepmother,” Helen Oyeyemi said in an interview with NPR about her new book, Boy, Snow, Bird (which made our 2014 book preview.)
Saving the Wicked Stepmother
Reading Biblical Narrative
Philip Esler’s new book Sex, Wives, and Warriors: Reading Biblical Narrative with its Ancient Audience, reintroduces our culture to some of the Bible’s most dramatic narratives.
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It’s cool, he senses the danger of genius
John Jeremiah Sullivan spoke to the Guardian about writing, Pulphead, and “finding that island of legitimacy.” And then there’s his recent NYT Magazine piece on Venus and Serena Williams.
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Give Rock and Roll Another Name
Chuck Klosterman wonders, which rock stars will historians of the future remember?
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The Ghost of Playboy’s Literary Past
“We editors told ourselves the naked women were merely carnival barkers: they got an audience into the tent, but we kept them with the content.” In the Guardian, Playboy‘s former fiction editor Amy Grace Loyd reveals what it was like to work at the magazine and how she commissioned work from writers like Donna Tartt, Margaret Atwood, and Junot Díaz. Read our review of Loyd’s debut novel, The Affairs of Others.
Going Back Up There
It’s not every day that fans of a novel look forward to a Lifetime movie, but such is the case for fans of Flowers in the Attic, whose 1987 film adaptation left out many of the details that made the book a “rite of passage for teenage girls in the ‘80s.” At Slate, Tammy Oler delves into the book’s importance and its history on the screen.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Joukhadar, Celan, and van Heemstra
Here’s a quick look at some notable books—new titles from Zeyn Joukhadar, Paul Celan, and Marjolijn van Heemstra—that are publishing this week.
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Interview with Pinckney Benedict
At The Rumpus, an engaging interview with Pinckney Benedict, author of Town Smokes and Miracle Boy and Other Stories, and one-time writing apprentice under Joyce Carol Oates.