Look back on an article Virginia Woolf wrote for Vogue in 1924. Staff writer emeritus Emily Colette Wilkinson tackles Woolf’s difficult text, To the Lighthouse.
Virginia in Vogue
On the Cover
Janet Hansen, designer for Alfred A. Knopf, explains her process in creating the cover for Steven Millhauser’s Voices in the Night. Look back on our comparisons of U.S. and U.K. book covers.
A Massive Online Close Reading
On February 17th, the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program will launch a free digital course open to everybody with an internet connection. The course is entitled “Every Atom: Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself,” and registration is now open. The course will “take a collective approach to a close reading of America’s democratic verse epic.”
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Special Snowflakes
“There are people who believe that readers and writers—at least the right kind of readers and writers—are special snowflakes, existing on a more exalted plane than mere mortals. Book people are educated. They are privileged. They are brave enough to speak out when the emperor shows up naked. They sup on nectar from flowers grown on the sunny slopes of Mount Olympus, harvested by chiton-wearing MFA candidates.” Jennifer Weiner responds to bad Amazon reviews, book blogs, and elitist ” book people” in an essay for The New Republic. We especially enjoy the line about the chitons.
Bring your @ game.
Sarah Weinman has compiled a list of verified literary Twitter accounts on her blog.
Dear Alice
Last week in the LRB, Christian Lorentzen used a review of Dear Life to slam the critical consensus surrounding Alice Munro. At Salon, Kyle Minor defends the author, who he thinks “demonstrates that the short story can operate out of a formal dexterity no less expansive in its possibility than the novel’s.”
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