Recommended Reading: this moving piece from Andrew Higgins at The Rumpus on admissions of guilt.
I Will Remember
Babysitting SEALs
“Write a short story from the point-of-view of a babysitter who one summer night witnesses something she never expected to see in her life, and then do a ‘find and replace’ in your Word doc until each instance of ‘babysitter’ becomes ‘Navy SEAL.'” Leigh Stein shares some “Writing Prompts for Girls and Women” with The Rumpus. Pair with our own Emily St. John Mandel‘s review of Leigh Stein’s The Fallback Plan.
Ghosts of the Tsunami
People Who Eat Darkness author Richard Lloyd Parry’s forthcoming book on the Tōhoku earthquake and its aftermath, Ghosts of the Tsunami, will be released some time in late summer/early fall, and BBC Radio put together a 30-minute teaser to tide you over until then. You can also check out Parry’s moving yet unsettling piece for the London Review of Books.
Book Picker Book Picker Pick Me A Book
It’s time for NPR‘s Book Concierge again! The interactive site will help you sort the year’s releases by about a gazillion criteria, including “book club ideas” and the seriously great “seriously great writing.”
A Way Out
Recommended Reading: Ursula Lindsey of The Nation takes a trip to Cairo, where many of the Egyptian capital’s artists and writers are being forced to find a way out due to government crackdowns.
O, Miami Poetry Festival
Do you live in Miami-Dade County? Do you want to get involved in the region’s burgeoning literature and poetry scene? If so you’ll want to check out the O, Miami Information Session on Wednesday, February 27th. The meeting is meant “to inform local Miami poets of different opportunities for participating in the 2013 O, Miami Poetry Festival.”
An Experimental Review of an Experimental Translation
Matthew Jakubowski’s “experimental review” of Yoko Tawada’s Portrait of a Tongue is unlike anything you’ve read in months, and I promise you that.
A Community of Introverts
“What I want to know is, since when does making art require participation in any community, beyond the intense participation that the art itself is undertaking? Since when am I not contributing to the community if all I want to do is make the art itself?” Meghan Tifft gives voice to the struggle of the introverted writer in an essay for The Atlantic.