Recommended Reading: Clare Beams writes for Ploughshares about the effect of reading a story in which someone reads a story.
Reading about Reading
Kindred
The new novel by Colm Tóibín draws largely from the author’s memories of his father passing away when he was young. In a Guardian essay, the author writes about his discovery that literature can be a vessel for grief, with a nod to the writer and Dublin mainstay Mary Lavin. If you’d like to learn more about Tóibín’s fiction, you can read our pieces on his books.
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Death, Sex, Money & James McBride
Recommended listening: Death, Sex & Money talks with James McBride, winner of the 2013 National Book Award in Fiction.
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The World Outside
Recommended Reading: Jesse Barron on Matthew Crawford’s The World Beyond Your Head.
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A Tide Coming In
In an in-depth interview for Nomadic Press, Shira Erlichman describes what it’s like to make art while living with mental illness. As she puts it, “The thing that is so strange to me is that it was so wide-lensed. Everyone thinks, ‘Oh, you go crazy, like in the movies. You’re just suddenly crazy.’ But there was such a domino effect. One little thing—it’s almost like 70 dominoes lined up in one track that all lead to one conclusion.” Pair with Gila Lyons’s Millions essay on writing through illness.
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The Right Kind of Ambivalence
In the latest entry in By Heart, which I’ve written about before, Thirty Girls author Susan Minot explains why she prefers to read multiple books at once instead of reading through single books from start to finish. Her reasoning? Books are “worlds to dip in and out of, and my relationship to them is continually deepening and evolving.”
Rimbaud in Ethiopia
From The New York Times Travel section, a look at the Ethiopian city where Rimbaud, the poet behind A Season in Hell, “finally found a kind of peace.”
The Queens of Repulsive Realism
A new wave of "Repulsive Realism" features characters who manufacture and revel in their own mire and rebel against packaged femininity.
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