Do author photographs change the way we see them (or the way we read their works)? At Lit Hub, stare into the souls of a few iconic writers and read about how author photos impact us. You could also read our review of Street Seen, which maps out how photography and reality became intertwined.
Photographing Reality
Delicate Husk, Inconvenient Hair
Recommended Reading: “So Often the Body Becomes a Distraction” by Kaveh Akbar.
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Interview with A.S. Byatt
Guardian posts an interesting video interview with A.S. Byatt about poetry, her novel The Children’s Book, and our persistent interest in ourselves.
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Atwood Adapted
Netflix and Hulu are set to adapt Margaret Atwood’s novels Alias Grace and The Handmaid’s Tale, respectively. Check out our own Edan Lepucki’s piece on Atwood’s vision of the future.
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Trouble Afoot in America’s Universities
Last April, our own Bill Morris bemoaned the current state of America’s higher education system. At the same time, Malcolm Harris derided the unreasonable cost of that same system. Now Benjamin Ginsberg, author of The Fall of the Faculty, places blame for both criticisms on the shoulders of universities’ expanding administrative staff.
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Gothic Roots
“If Gothic literature had a family tree, its twisted gnarled branches chock-full of imperiled, swooning heroines and mysterious monks, with ghosts who sit light on the branches, and Frankenstein’s monster who sits heavy, with troops of dwarves, and winking nuns, and stunted, mostly nonflammable babies, at its base would sit Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto.” Carrie Frye writes for Longreads about the history and personality behind the first Gothic novel, which turns 250 this year.
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Writing-Dude-in-Nature Territory
“In Pond, Claire-Louise Bennett stomps all over writing-dude-in-nature territory with her poetic unraveling of Thoreau’s wilderness jaunt.” A. N. Devers on Bennett’s celebrated new collection.