Ten years after hurricane Katrina, Fatima Shaik reflects on freedom of expression, gentrification, and the state of education in New Orleans. You could also check out Gary Rivlin’s Katrina: After the Flood, featured in our 2015 nonfiction preview.
After the Storm
Cirque Du Freak
The latest actor to go vampire? John. C Reilly! As you might expect, he’s a hammy vampire, not a sparkly one. See the preview for Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant
She Has Haunted Me in Spectacular Ways
“Lillian haunted me when she was alive. And she has haunted me since her death in July 2015. And she has haunted me in spectacular ways since I published my memoir a month ago.” Sherman Alexie has cancelled the rest of a book tour to promote his new memoir about his relationship with his mother, reports The Guardian. See also: our interview with Ellen Forney, who illustrated Alexie’s National Book Award-winning YA novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.
For Sale: Hemingway App, Doesn’t Work.
A new Hemingway App promises to trim the fat from your writing in a way that the Great Bearded One would’ve approved. The app uses various color codes to highlight writing written in the passive voice, writing that’s too hard to read, and also unnecessary adverbs or complex phrases. Sounds interesting enough, no? Well, the problem is that someone ran the Hemingway App on some actual Ernest Hemingway writing, and it turns out that Papa himself didn’t even write to the app’s standard.
A Poet in Need
Friends, former students and admirers are rallying around poet Dean Young. Young, who has taught at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a number of other MFA programs, is in need of a heart transplant, and fellow poet Tony Hoagland has put out a call for help. (Thanks Arna)
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Asymptote’s Global Birthday Party
This year marks the second anniversary of Asymptote, an international journal focusing on literature in translation. The staff is commemorating the occasion by hosting a series of events in eight different locales around the globe: Beijing, Barcelona, Berlin, Islamabad, Chicago, Taipei, Singapore and New York City. Folks attending The Big Apple’s event on January 20th will get to see Millions contributor Reif Larsen live in action alongside Cole Swensen, Paul Legault, Adam Sorkin, and Ariana Reines.
Ellis Backs Franzen
According to Vulture, Bret Easton Ellis firmly backs Team Franzen in the forthcoming issue of The Paris Review. That issue, by the way, hits shelves next week. I know because I saw a video of it on the printing press.
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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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