“Every culture has its monsters,” and Jason Diamond writes about the Headless Horseman and one of the oldest American horror stories for Electric Literature.
The Headless Horseman
Burroughs’s curse, Capote’s burden
"Enjoy your dirty money. You will never have anything else." And other things William Burroughs's wrote to Truman Capote. There's a bit more backstory over at RealityStudio, though the letter stands on its fearsome and indignant own.
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The Library, It’s Made of People
The Toronto Public Library is running an innovative program wherein, in addition to books and other types of media you might expect, you can also check out people; specifically, this Human Library gives you access to folks with an interesting job or story to tell, like a journalist, a Buddhist monk and a cancer survivor.
Writing Heartbreak
Learn more about Hans Christian Andersen Award winner Cao Wenxuan. “China has given us so many heartbreaking stories. How can you avoid writing about them? I can’t sacrifice my life experience in order to make children happy.” Pair with Edan Lepucki’s piece on the grown-up counterparts to children’s stories.
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Cringe-Inducing Books & Growing Up
Two off-site appearances in as many months from our otherwise relatively reclusive editor, C. Max Magee? And both times invoking the theme of lost adolescence? Something's afoot! Last month, Max dropped by The Morning News' booth for the Tournament of Books' zombie round, and now he's joining a star-studded cast at The Awl to answer the question, "What Books Make You Cringe To Remember?"
Melville the Whale
To honor Herman Melville for making the great white whale a metaphor for the inscrutable and unknowable, a prehistoric leviathan now bears his name. (Thanks, Kevin)
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On Granta’s “Prescient” List
Recommended: Ellah Alfrey on selecting Granta's Best of Young British Novelists.
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Women in Translation
"Between 2008 and 2014 there were 2,471 fiction translations published in the U.S. for the first time ever. Of those, 1,775 were written by men, compared to 657 by women, and 39 by men & women. In terms of percentages, female authors make up 26.6% of all the fiction translations published over the past seven years. I suspected going into this that there would be significantly more male authors published in translation than women, but I figured it would be more like a 60-40 split, not 71-27. That’s brutal." Chad Post on the gender gap in literary translation.