Feather-Light Chime

Recommended Reading: Janet Maslin on Peter Carey’s Amnesia. You could also read our own Garth Risk Hallberg on Carey’s His Illegal Self.

"It was only in 1987, when she went to National Taiwan University, that the censorship laws were relaxed. Yet the censorship laws seemed to have an opposing effect on her literary ambitions. " Meet Qiu Miaojin, the first woman in Chinese literature to come out as openly gay. Ankita Chakraborty at Longreads has more on this remarkable writer.

The bodies of Perry Smith and Richard Hickock – the subjects of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood – may be exhumed in order to solve a 1959 murder in Osprey, Florida.

Doubleday pulled a Beyonce and published Colson Whitehead’s latest book, The Underground Railroad, a month early. Oprah chose Whitehead’s book for her book club, and Doubleday “secretly started shipping out 200,000 copies in anticipation of the announcement.” You can also read a review from Michiko Kakutani at the New York Times.

“Poetry is an egg with a horse inside.” — An anonymous third grader. Matthea Harvey writes about the power of poetry and how children can enjoy poetry in the classroom. For more poetry, check out our On Poetry column.