Recommended Reading: Iranian novelist-in-exile Shahriar Mandanipour talks about censorship, religion, and love in Little Village.
Censoring an Iranian Story
Utne Reader Controversy
The Utne Reader offices are moving from Minneapolis to Topeka, and the magazine’s not taking any current employees with it.
●
●
Polar Incentives
Depending on your political persuasion, this is either good news or bad news: Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel will jump in a freezing Lake Michigan if schoolchildren in his city read at least 2 million books this summer.
●
●
Moby-Dick In Pictures
Today is Herman Melville‘s birthday. This October, Tin House will be releasing Matt Kish‘s Moby-Dick In Pictures. Kish began illustrating Melville’s masterpiece in 2009 by “creating images based on text selected from every page of the 552-page Signet Classics paperback edition.” You can preview some of the work on the book’s designated Twitter account.
●
●
YA Gay
Two American YA authors, Rachel Manija Brown and Sherwood Smith, were asked to “straighten” gay characters. Here is the rebuttal that followed.
●
●
Not So Super Journalists
Spider-Man is one of our favorite superheroes, but he’s a terrible journalist. At The Atlantic, Daniel D. Snyder discusses how Peter Parker and Clark Kent are unethical reporters. “The media is, in theory at least, supposed to be honest. Putting on a costume, coming up with a fake name, and lying to everyone about what you really do are the opposite of that.”
Recommended Reading: New Ashbery
Recommended Reading: The American Reader has some new John Ashbery poems. We love “Listening Tour.”
Whitman Illuminated
Speaking of innovative publishing, Tin House released a new edition of Whitman‘s “Song of Myself” illustrated by Allen Crawford on May 16th. There’s a book trailer, and selected pages from the finished book can be seen here.