A Pittsburgh-based nonprofit is offering free housing and stipends to “foreign-born scribes who endured imprisonment, or worse, in their home countries.”
City of Asylum
Pamela or Plath?
I’m disappointed that I was only able to get 8/12 correct on the Guardian’s “Who’s the Poet: Pamela Anderson or Sylvia Plath” quiz, but I’m consoling myself with the fact that the 50% is the average.
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The Common in the City Party
Tonight! Celebrate 3 years with The Common. You can still buy tickets to this elegant lit party here. André Aciman reads from his latest novel Harvard Square.
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Cheap Night Club, South Side of Chicago
Year in Reading alumnus Thomas Mallon’s foreword to the new edition of John O’Hara’s 1940 novel Pal Joey is available in The Paris Review Daily. Mallon predicts that “ O’Hara’s moment for a really breakout revival—outdated enough to be exotic—may at last be upon us.”
Roald Dahl Excerpts on Cereal Boxes
In an attempt to encourage kids to read, Puffin has struck a deal to place Roald Dahl excerpts on the back of at least 10 million cereal boxes in the UK.
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Graphic Pains
Over at Public Books, Jared Gardner explores the theme of pain and illness at the heart of many graphic narratives. As he explains it, “Illness, mental and physical, is arguably comics’ invisible master theme, deeply woven into their genome and shaping the stories they tell, from the earliest newspaper strips (chronic allergies in Winsor McCay’s Little Sammy Sneeze) through the rise of superhero comics (from Batman’s PTSD in 1939 through the Fantastic Four’s radiation poisoning in 1961).” Pair with Paul Morton’s Millions piece on the history of Marvel Comics.
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