BuzzFeed has launched READER, a new home for literary writing, featuring an essay by Melissa Broder, poetry by Jericho Brown, and a short story from Helen Oyeyemi’s What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours.
Reading Material
“Hana caraka / data sawala”
Fun Fact: the Javanese alphabet, read sequentially, comprises a pretty beautiful poem. What’s your language’s alphabet done lately?
Booker Prize Chair on the Shortlist
“With the [Booker] longlist it was ‘What, no Amis or McEwan or Rushdie?’; with the shortlist it’s ‘What, no Mitchell or Tsiolkas or Tremain?’” Andrew Motion, chair of the judges, shares his thoughts on the whole business of judging the Booker prize, at Guardian.
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A History of Resilience, Documented by Keum Suk Gendry-Kim
Keum Suk Gendry-Kim discusses her newest book, The Waiting, inspired by her mother's family separation and reunion in the midst of war.
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Ping-ping-ping
Back in July, Evan Allgood interviewed Alina Simone for The Millions. The writer and indie rocker talked about her new book and the phenomenon of “gilded turds” in the art world. Now, at Full-Stop, Jordan Kisner conducts his own interview with Simone, who tells him that “we’re in this age where every three seconds you’re getting pinged by some weird ‘ask’ that is almost like an invitation to a new life.”
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On Writing and “Built-in” Editing
Sergio De La Pava, the once and future king of our list of top ten books, gets the interview treatment at The Believer’s Logger page. Now might be a good time to scroll back to our profile of the author, whose first book, A Naked Singularity, came out in bookstores in June.
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New Vonnegut
A never-before-published novella by Kurt Vonnegut called Basic Training is now seeing the light of day as a Kindle Single. Julie Bosman has a bit more info at the New York Times.
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From Flesh to Wafer to Cash
Here’s everything you’ve ever wanted to know about the communion wafer’s place in free-market capitalism.
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