Year in Reading alumna Terry McMillan discusses “why she chooses to focus on Black women, her writing process, her latest book I Almost Forgot About You, and how Black women are treated in the publishing world” at Black Media Minute.
Remembering You
DJ Eldest Immigrant Daughter
“The first boy to kiss your mother later raped women / when the war broke out. She remembers hearing this / from your uncle, then going to your bedroom and lying down on the floor. You were at school.” The poetry of Warsan Shire, Young Poet Laureate of London, does not mess around.
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Disappearing Welsh
If there existed a trophy for the ugliest-looking but prettiest-sounding language, then the 721,700 living Welsh speakers would boast more championships than Alabama’s football team. Yes, the Welsh. They of the villages Llangefni and Llanfairfechan. (To say nothing of Llanfairpwllgwyngyll.) Wouldn’t it be a shame for such a language to disappear? For writing in this language to stop being published? Stanford’s Cynthia Haven thinks so.
They’re Out There. (Ellos están ahí fuera.)
“Peru’s air force is reopening an office responsible for investigating UFOs due to ‘increased sightings of anomalous aerial phenomena’ in the country’s skies.”
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The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard
“I am so grateful for this tool in my writer’s toolkit. It has liberated both me and my texts from an overbearing approach to ‘getting it right.’” Cara Benson for the Amazon Author Insights blog (full disclosure: Amazon helps us pay the bills over here!) on the benefits of writing and revising by hand. And she’s not the only one who likes to go manual.
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Simpsons Did It
Nearly proven: The Infinite Monkey Theorem. The theorem, popularized by “The Simpsons”, posits “that an infinite number of monkeys sitting at an infinite number of typewriters would eventually reproduce the works of Shakespeare by chance.”
Darkest Images
Recommended Viewing: these entries to a contest in which entrants were asked to draw Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.
A New Generation of Historical Epics
Ryan Lenora Brown delves into the ways an exciting new generation of African women writers are taking on the historical epic.
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