“The rest of her speech to the U.N. that day is an exact outline for what she wanted the rest of the Parable books to be about — a way out that she did not live to write herself.” For Electric Literature, Kristopher Jansma explores the unwritten Parable books of acclaimed sci-fi author Octavia Butler. Pair with our consideration of Butler’s novel Kindred.
Unknown Parables
Congratulations friends!
Our friends over at the LARB have received two nods for the Pushcart Prize! Congratulate them by reading through the nominated essays: David Sheilds’s “Life is Short; Art is shorter” and Antoine Wilson’s “Notes on Hack.“
Sentimental Education
Recommended Reading: On sentimentality in literary fiction and commercial novels.
●
●
Sarah Palin, White Goddess
N+1’s Marco Roth turns in an ambitious and historically nuanced exploration of white grievance in a putatively postracial America. Highly recommended.
●
●
National Book Foundation 5 Under 35
The 2015 National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honorees have been announced! This year’s honorees are Angela Flournoy for The Turner House (our review here), Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi for Fra Keeler (our review here), Colin Barrett for Young Skins (which appeared in our most recent book preview), Tracy O’Neill for The Hopeful (you can read her Millions articles here and here), and Megan Kruse for Call Me Home. For all of the National Book Award longlists, check out our post.
●
●
Good Luck
Your inner monologue is whip-smart. You can’t imagine life outside Manhattan. You’ve had multiple husbands, all of whom left you for other women. Is it possible you’re in a Grace Paley story?
●
●
The Bad Sex Award
What’s it like to win the Literary Review‘s Bad Sex award? As 2010 “winner” Rowan Somerville reports, “It’s a hard pill to swallow … Despite the magazine’s assertion that ‘it’s only a bit of fun’ there’s an atmosphere of bullying peculiar to public schools about the whole thing.”