“I saw a novel with a mysterious-looking black woman on the cover. That was why I picked it up – because of the African woman on the cover of a book in the Science Fiction and Fantasy section. I read the first page and my eyes nearly popped out.” Book Riot has a killer roundup of posts in honor of Octavia Butler‘s birthday today, including five other sci-fi authors on being inspired by her writing (that’s Nnedi Okorafor above). Pair with our own Edan Lepucki‘s consideration of Butler’s novel Kindred.
Where to Begin
A Prodigal Daughter
“We lived in the Midlands, and when I moved to Dublin for university Frank liked to call me up and talk to me about my late mother, whom he informed me was ‘no saint’.” Sally Rooney’s short story from the New Irish Writing issue of Granta is now available on the Literary Hub website.
Tuesday New Release Day: Boyd, Swift, Fifty Shades
New this week are William Boyd's Waiting for Sunrise and Graham Swift's Wish You Were Here. Readers can also now get their hands on the second two volumes in the racy, headline-making Fifty Shades trilogy.
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Toole’s Place in the South
Did you really dig Cory MacLauchlin’s Millions article on The Lost Manuscript to A Confederacy of Dunces? If so, you’ll love this interview with MacLauchlin in Deep South Magazine.
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D.H. Lawrence at 21
"If you would write, try to be terse and in some measure original—the world abounds with new similes and metaphors... If you cannot tell people of something they have not seen, or have not thought, it is hardly worthwhile to write at all." The Paris Review shares writing advice from a 21-year-old D.H. Lawrence .
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BookExpo America
John Green, Tina Fey, and "a book-swapping/speed-dating cocktail hour": BookExpo America has taken over Manhattan's Javitz Center, and if you live anywhere near New York we think you might want to check out the public BookCon event this Saturday. We're not saying you'll meet the love of your life, but maybe you'll win the Hunger Games trivia contest.
The Artist as Activist
"No one was more grimly adamant that the world was in mortal peril, or had more fun trying to save it from itself." Over at The New Yorker's Page Turner blog, Alexandra Schwartz considers the life and work of Grace Paley, noting that Paley's slim output "is a great shame, if not so surprising. Activism, like alcoholism, can distract a writer from the demands of her desk." Also of note: this tribute to Paley that our own Garth Risk Hallberg wrote upon her death in 2007.
Remembering Gregory Rabassa
Gregory Rabassa, literary translator and professor at Queens College, died this past week. Rabassa helped introduce Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude and Julio Cortázar’s Hopscotch, among others, to English-language readers. He was 94 years old.
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On Board The Pequod
Recommended reading: Ben Shattuck spends a night and a day aboard a New England whaling ship in an attempt to better understand Ishmael's (and Melville's) experiences, and combines Moby-Dick excerpts with his own accounts of life onboard in a piece for The Atlantic.
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