Alexandra Alter interviews National Book Award winner Ta-Nehisi Coates about the success of Between the World and Me. As he puts it, “The best part of writing is really to educate yourself. I don’t want to be anybody’s expert. I came in to learn.” Pair with our own Sonya Chung’s Millions piece on Coates’s epistolary essay.
Writing Educates the Self
Poet Laureate (Again)
“Her exchanges with Americans in small towns and rural communities are inspiring an appreciation of poetry and history – and remind us that poetry has value for all of our lives.” The Library of Congress appointed Tracy K. Smith to a second term as the 22nd Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry for 2018-2019. For her second term, Smith edited an anthology called American Journal: Fifty Poems for Our Time, which will be published by Graywolf Press in association with the Library of Congress. Pair with: our review of Smith’s memoir, Ordinary Light.
“The snow falls like heads of cabbage”
Recommended Reading: Short fiction entitled “Unlikely Places” by Kim Chinquee.
Language is Power
Recommended Reading: Writers are signing a petition in opposition to Donald Trump.
Wells Tower’s Fairy Tale
Recommended Viewing: Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned author Wells Tower reads an original fairy tale entitled, “The Chinese Person.”
“I was the shadow of the waxwing slain”
Does the central, eponymous poem from Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire stand on its own as a literary masterwork?
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Narrating the Coup
“In times of tension it is particularly important to defend what is good, identify what would worsen the status quo, strive for balanced assessments, always hoping for the best, and try to identify and oppose any and all steps toward coercive authoritarianism.” Richard Falk narrates the coup in Turkey at Guernica.
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