Is Detroit the new Brooklyn? Two Brooklyn writers relocated to the Motor City and are trying to turn the city into a writers’ haven with the project “Write A House.” The non-profit will award free, renovated houses in Detroit to writers of modest means.
Writing in the Motor City
Dear Alice
Last week in the LRB, Christian Lorentzen used a review of Dear Life to slam the critical consensus surrounding Alice Munro. At Salon, Kyle Minor defends the author, who he thinks "demonstrates that the short story can operate out of a formal dexterity no less expansive in its possibility than the novel’s."
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World Book Night
A committee headed by the author Tracy Chevalier this week unveiled the lineup of twenty-five specially printed titles which will be distributed by thousands of volunteers across the UK on April 23, 2012 as part of an international celebration of reading.
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Miami in Literature
Cristina García, author of Dreaming in Cuban, sits down for an interview about Miami's place in literature. This year, Miami's enjoyed the literary spotlight quite a bit: at the National Book Awards ceremony, Books & Books proprietor Mitchell Kaplan took home the Literarian Award. Likewise, the Miami Book Fair International wrapped up another successful year on November 18th.
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The Value of Difficulty
“When we read a book that requires that effort — when the act of reading becomes rigorous and self-aware, rather than effortless and transparent — we get to have a history with what we’ve given ourselves to, a history etched into us by the demanding friction of its difficulty.” Zoë Heller and Leslie Jamison debate whether or not we overvalue difficult literature in The New York Times.
Belladonna* Reading Tonight in NYC
Tonight in New York, poets Juliana Spahr and TC Tolbert read and discuss “how can we, as poets, take care of ourselves, our creative work, and the larger planetary body on which we depend?" 7.p.m. at Dixon Place.
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Twelve Angry Women
"And this is a story about what women can do to each other—why women are cruel to each other, why women don’t reach down and help each other." In conversation for Vanity Fair, Megan Abbott and Gillian Flynn talk about female rage, #MeToo, and Sharp Objects, the HBO series based on Flynn's novel. Pair with: Millions staffers Janet Potter and Edan Lepucki talk about Flynn and her novels.