John Green, Tina Fey, and “a book-swapping/speed-dating cocktail hour”: BookExpo America has taken over Manhattan’s Javitz Center, and if you live anywhere near New York we think you might want to check out the public BookCon event this Saturday. We’re not saying you’ll meet the love of your life, but maybe you’ll win the Hunger Games trivia contest.
BookExpo America
Two-fer from Kiš
Serbian writer Danilo Kiš, recently profiled by Sam Sacks, has two short pieces up on the Bomb! website.
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The Cosmonaut
Conrad Aiken's tombstone reads: "Cosmos Mariner — Destination Unknown." Which raises the question: what exactly does this epitaph say about the poet's work? In the LA Times, an argument that Aiken deserves a reappraisal.
RIP Mavis Gallant
The Canadian writer Mavis Gallant passed away on Tuesday morning at the age of 91. A frequent New Yorker contributor, Gallant published two novels and ten volumes of short fiction in her lifetime, one of which, Home Truths, won the Governor General’s Award. The Globe and Mail's obituary describes her as having “a journalist’s nose, a cinematographer’s eye and a novelist’s imagination.” (Andrew Saikali wrote about Gallant for The Millions back in 2008.)
“What kind of birdie are you?”
Recommended Reading: Charles Simic’s ode to Summertime. (Trust me, you’ll need this. It’s brutal outside and we need to remember why we even bother with it.)
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A Complete Reading
Recommended Reading: From The New Yorker, it's Tessa Hadley on fiction as anthropology: "When I’m writing a story, its world is thin, unsatisfactory, untrue, until I start to find my way to those details, those 'small cultural signifiers.' As these accumulate on the page, the life in the piece thickens, the details breed, and the story begins to stir."
A Monster’s Body
Marjorie Liu is the author of Monstress, a new comic from Image. In her free time, she has also earned a law degree and published over twenty novels, novellas, short stories, and comics. Hear what she has to say about diversity, the body, and writing. You could also read our review of The Best American Comics 2014.
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