Nobody wants to be a Hufflepuff! Over at The Atlantic, David Sims defends the oft-maligned Harry Potter house for their egalitarian ethos and general goodness. At The Millions, Michelle Dean’s essay about the value of J.K. Rowling’s Potter series will have you wanting to give them a re-read.
A Lot o’ Duffers
“Medvedev is Russia’s first genuinely post-Soviet writer”
n+1 posted the introduction Keith Gessen wrote for Kirill Medvedev’s It’s No Good poetry and essay collection, which Gessen translated along with Mark Krotov, Cory Merrill, and Bela Shayevich.
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Belladonna* and Kundiman Celebrate Theresa Hak Kyung Cha
If you’re in New York this weekend, join Belladonna* and Kundiman for a celebration of what would have been the 60th birthday of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (a full life cycle event in the Chinese/Korean lunar calendar). Nine poets, including Cathy Park Hong, Myung Mi Kim, Sina Queyras, and Anne Waldman, will perform a staged reading from Dictee, Cha’s best known work. There will be birthday cake, projected images, scholarly contextualization, and other surprises. Saturday March 5, at the Bowery Poetry Club, 2pm.
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Houellebecq Wins France’s Top Literary Award
Controversial writer Michel Houellebecq finally wins France’s top literary award, the Goncourt Prize, for The Map and the Territory (published in French last September).
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Going Back Up There
It’s not every day that fans of a novel look forward to a Lifetime movie, but such is the case for fans of Flowers in the Attic, whose 1987 film adaptation left out many of the details that made the book a “rite of passage for teenage girls in the ‘80s.” At Slate, Tammy Oler delves into the book’s importance and its history on the screen.
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Fear and Loathing in NYC
Hunter S. Thompson was a man whose reputation preceded him. Let’s honor his legacy the way he probably would have wanted–by taking a look back at a list of the crimes he committed in the Big Apple. If you don’t know anything about Hunter S. Thompson, this job application that he sent to the Vancouver Sun in 1958 should get you started.
Who doesn’t love to hit happy hour after work?
Christine Sismondo believes bars deserve more credit for “produc[ing] a particular type of public sphere in colonial America.” She discusses her new book America Walks Into a Bar with The Smithsonian’s Rebecca Dalzell.
Edan’s Story is The Standard
Our own Edan Lepucki’s “Ambulance of Boys” was one of the finalists in the Standard/Warby Short Story Contest. You can read check out all of the winners over here. (Edan’s is on page 8.)
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