Out this week: The Last Kid Left by Rosecrans Baldwin; The Answers by Catherine Lacey; Dear Cyborgs by Eugene Lim; Perennials by Mandy Berman; Everybody’s Son by Thrity Umrigar; and The Gypsy Moth Summer by Julia Fierro. For more on these and other new titles, go read our most recent book preview.
Tuesday New Release Day: Baldwin; Lacey; Lim; Berman; Umrigar; Fierro
A Selected Weapon
Sylvia Plath’s final days have long been a source of fascination and horror for many readers. In a forthcoming unauthorized biography of Plath’s husband Ted Hughes, it is claimed that one of Hughes’s more contentious poems, “Last Letter,” was written after an argument the couple had the night before Plath took her own life. Ted Hughes: An Unauthorized Life is out next week.
Toni Morrison’s Momentous Editorial Career
Arielle Gray reflects on the lasting legacy of Toni Morrison's role as an editor and how she ushered in a generation of writers during her 19-year career at Random House
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It Was Happening
“Stop smoking, first of all, and then don’t hold your breath, don’t cough, do not for any reason pick up heavy packages, boxes, suitcases. Never lean over, or dive headfirst into water. The carnal throes of passion were forbidden, because even an ardent kiss could cause my veins to burst.” At long last, Lina Meruane’s semi-autobiographical novel Seeing Red has been published in English. Meruane has long been hailed as one of the most brilliant South American writers that American readers had probably never heard of.
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Shelf-Love
Do you want to show off your bookshelf online without typing up a list of your books on Goodreads? Well, you strange exhibitionist, you can do that now with Bookshelfies, a Tumblr featuring pictures of people standing in front of — well, you know.
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“I learned to look outward more”
“There are dangers for an artist in any academic environment,” says former Poetry editor Christian Wiman, who now teaches at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music. “Academia rewards people who know their own minds and have developed an ironclad confidence in speaking them. That kind of assurance is death for an artist.”