Recommended Reading: Millions contributor Shaj Mathew on avant-garde fiction.
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An Encounter with a Stranger
Over at Longreads, you can read the first chapter of Alexander Chee’s The Queen of the Night – one of the most anticipated books of 2016.
Contested Accounts
After reading through two new biographies of Sylvia Plath — American Isis and Mad Girl’s Love Song — Terry Castle concludes that “nothing about her life or legacy seems wholesome or resolved.” (Related: our own Hannah Gersen talking with Pain, Parties, Work author Elizabeth Winder.)
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Reading Childhood
NPR launched a new storybook project on Tuesday. Check out their Tumblr and see what parents (for example, Amy Chua and Edwidge Danticat) are reading to their kids. Pair with our own Kevin Hartnett’s essay on reconnecting with children’s books as an adult.
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Faulkner’s Inspiration; Scholar’s Denial
Did the real-life family of Edgar Wiggin Francisco III inspire some of William Faulkner’s writing? Did a group of scholars try to suppress inquiry into the matter?
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Grief Is The Thing
In his 2015 Year in Reading, Garth Risk Hallberg told us about Max Porter’s Grief Is The Thing With Feathers, a quasi-poem/novel/memoir which “you will quickly forget is weird as hell, because it is also beautiful as hell, moving as hell, and funny as hell.” Though the book isn’t slated for stateside release for another few months, there is a fantastic review over at the London Review of Books that’s well worth the read.
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Lineup Announced for 2013 PEN World Voices Festival
The lineup for the 2013 PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature has been announced. The festival will commence on April 29th with a reading “about the notion of bravery” from three writers – including Millions contributor A. Igoni Barrett.