It’s National Poetry Month – huzzah! To celebrate, head over to The Literary Hub and check out this list of ten new must-read collections, from Ocean Vuong’s Night Sky With Exit Wounds to Jamaal May’s The Big Book of Exit Strategies.
Go Read Some Poems
Poetry from the Road
Recommended Reading: Amy Woolard’s poem “Things Go South” at TriQuarterly. “Here, the apple don’t fall/From the tree. Here, whatever you/Find lying on the ground is yours./A scratch-off waiting to strike.”
Howling Against Censorship
A San Francisco prisoner wanted to read werewolf erotica so badly that he took it to state court. The case has brought up problems with prison censorship and calls to mind Avi Steinberg’s memoir, Running the Books: Adventures of an Accidental Prison Librarian (here’s our review.)
“That’s some catch, that Catch-22”
Vanity Fair takes a closer look at Joseph Heller‘s tragicomic novel Catch-22. If you’re in NYC this August, you can supplement this reading with McNally Jackson’s “Ask Me About…” series.
There Now
It’s fitting in a strange way that the author of Being There is now the subject of an oddball novel-turned-biography. In the Times, Benjamin Markovits reads Jerome Charyn’s book Jerzy, which gives the life of Jerzy Kosinski a treatment he’d likely appreciate.
2017 John Leonard Prize Finalists Announced
The finalists for the John Leonard Prize — for a first book in any genre — were announced by the National Book Critics Circle. This year’s finalists are Lesley Nneka Arimah‘s What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky, Julie Buntin‘s Marlena, Zinzi Clemmons’ What We Lose, Layli Long Soldier’s Whereas, Carmen Maria Machado‘s Her Body and Other Parties, and Gabriel Tallent‘s My Absolute Darling. The winner will be announced in January. Pair with: Buntin’s 2017 Year in Reading entry.
Is a New Dave Eggers Novel on the Way?
A tipster has pointed us to a mention of what seems to be a new Dave Eggers novel on the back cover of a catalog from a Dutch publisher. the title translates loosely to A Hologram for the King. A description from a Dutch bookselling site (again translated poorly by Google Translate) suggest that the book will follow an American in Saudi Arabia where he tries to sell holographic technology to King Abdullah. We’ve seen no other mentions of this book anywhere, and so far McSweeney’s hasn’t responded to our questions. Anyone out there know more?