Out this week: A Good Family by Erik Fassnacht; Best Boy by Eli Gottlieb; A Window Opens by Elisabeth Egan; You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine by Alexandra Kleeman; The Fall of Princes by Robert Goolrick; and a limited edition of Neil Gaiman’s The Truth Is a Cave in the Black Mountains. For more on these and other new titles, check out our Great Second-Half 2015 Book Preview.
Tuesday New Release Day: Fassnacht; Gottlieb; Egan; Kleeman; Goolrick; Gaiman
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.)
Your Local Heroes
Thanks to the generosity of Daniel Handler, the American Library Association has launched the Lemony Snicket Prize for Noble Librarians Faced with Adversity. The prize will award $3,000 and an “odd, symbolic object” of Handler’s choosing to a librarian who “has faced adversity with integrity and dignity intact.” (h/t The Paris Review)
Get Yer Free Books Right Here
“This year, Free Comic Book Day turns sixteen years old. The good news: It can drive itself to swim practice now!” NPR’s Monkey See blog provides an irreverent and useful guide to Free Comic Book Day, which is tomorrow, May 6th. “When you read a comic, you are accepting a direct message from one singular honest soul,” Paul Morton wrote in our own pages a few years back.
“No one remembers Mr Coffee Nerves”
“Suddenly I couldn’t believe/you have to put it back,/must be intelligent,/bring sandwich money,/whether British or American.” Three new poems by John Ashbery.
AWP Madness
If you’re going to be at AWP, check out the Flatmancrooked and Mud Luscious Press “Author vs. Puppet” reading (and, yes, puppet show). I’ll be reading/puppeteering, as will novella writers Emma Straub and Alyssa Knickerbocker, among others. The fun starts at the Flatmancrooked booth on Friday at 4 pm!
“Odessa stands for freedom as well as sleaze.”
“Embracing the transients and flâneurs, this is, in effect, a museum of Russian literature. And, being Russian, it becomes a museum of censorship and repression as well as art: of genius and bravery, blood and lies.” Snowdrops author A.D. Miller visits Ukraine’s Odessa State Literary Museum.
‘Confessional Writing’ Is a Tired Line of Sexist Horseshit
“If I’m writing something about my period, it doesn’t mean that I’m not an intellectual. I can write an intellectual essay about my navel or a whole book about my period.” The Literary Hub has a transcript of Red Ink’s panel discussion on literary misfits, including Marcy Dermansky, Melissa Febos, Michele Filgate, Sarah Gerard, Emily Raboteau, and Lidia Yuknavitch. And we will never, ever miss a chance to mention Yuknavitch’s essay in our own pages about grief.
Our Stonecutters
Do yourself a favor and pick up a copy of Stonecutter. In the most recent issue, you’ll find our own Lydia Kiesling’s essay on cigarettes and literature; in Issue #2, you’ll find Mark O’Connell discussing Roberto Bolaño’s Between Parentheses. You read that correctly: 50% of all Stonecutter issues feature Millions staffers.