“Her design captures the simultaneous violence and sensuality in Machado’s work, in which women’s bodies both desire and disappear in fantastical and disturbing ways.” Electric Literature interviews Carmen Maria Machado and cover designer Kimberly Glyder about their collaboration on Her Body and Other Parties, which is a National Book Award for Fiction finalist. See also: The Millions interview with Machado on her debut collection.
A Cover Worth Talking About
Blind Date with Dostoevsky
At the Paris Review Daily, Elif Batuman walks us through part one of her 12-hour blind date with Dostoevsky. (via Book Bench)
Adaptation Progress Report
This week in book-to-film adaptations: Meredith Goldstein rounds up some possible and upcoming projects for The Boston Globe, including adaptations of The Goldfinch (which we cast here) and our own Emily St. John Mandel‘s Station Eleven.
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Glamorama – Brooklyn Book Festival Edition
NYC-area readers are invited to an event this Friday centered on the topic of marketing literature in the age of Gawker. At 7 p.m. I’ll be moderating a panel discussion that includes novelists Fiona Maazel and Tao Lin, literary agent Erin Hosier, and Christopher Kolouris of the website Scallywag & Vagabond. The event, which doubles as a launch party for Canteen magazine’s “Hot Authors” issue, also features two bands, a DJ, and an open bar. More info at 3rd Ward.
Keanu Reeves, Poet
for actors who’ve considered suicide/when the matrix isn’t enuf: Keanu Reeves, who some years ago raised hackles when he played Shakespeare’s melancholy Dane, has now written a book-length poem called Ode to Happiness that pokes fun at excessive melancholy. “I draw a hot sorrow bath/In my despair room,” it begins.
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Suitor by Suitor
At Salon, Bird by Bird author Anne Lamott recounts her year in the online dating world, a year which she says was complicated by the fact that “91 percent of men snore loudly.”
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