“I quickly stopped trying to draw in a realistic way and went for an efficient one.” Max de Radiguès is a Belgian cartoonist whose work you should familiarize yourself with.
Disarmingly Like Love
The Importance of Conversations with Mira Jacob
Mira Jacob discusses how key conversations sparked the idea for her graphic memoir, Good Talk.
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Norway to Digitize Its Entire Library
In 2006, the National Library of Norway enacted an ambitious plan to digitize every book in its holdings by 2020. The idea is that all of the content (even works under copyright) will be accessible to people logging into the system with a Norwegian IP address.
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The Seduction of Deductions
“Tax authorities in Finland are turning to poetry in a bid to get more firms to file their tax returns electronically.”
Of the Tribe
More than ever, we need literature that gives Westerners a compelling entrée into—a way of better understanding—the lives of war-and-terrorism fraught regions. Over at Bloom, T.L. Khleif, recent recipient of a Rona Jaffe award, writes about Jamil Ahmad’s The Wandering Falcon, a collection that immerses readers in the tribal areas of Pakistan prior to the rise of the Taliban. Among other notable honors, Ahmad joins the pantheon of late-blooming male authors who would not have ever published were it not for the stubborn encouragement of their wives.
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Lost and Found
“I lost the first good novel I ever wrote to a computer disaster. It happened at a crucial time in my life. I was working nights, living in a mouse-infested tenement in Giuliani-era Harlem and still figuring out if I could even do this thing — become a writer for real.” Mat Johnson on NPR’s All Tech Considered blog about the ultimate authorial nightmare, and how he recovered from it. Pair with our review of Johnson’s latest novel, Loving Day.
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