Eve Ewing recently released her debut poetry collection, Electric Arches, and we dubbed it one of our must-read poetry books last month. Year in Reading alum (and another Millions favorite) Kiese Laymon called her for a Guernica magazine interview and the result is a wonderful discussion on shea butter, Jordans, writing with young people as her primary audience and Assata Shakur as a literary inspiration.
Two Must Read Poets Converse
Herta Müller’s Nobel Lecture
Herta Müller’s Nobel Lecture is now available in translation.
Touring The Third Hotel
“I thought quite a lot about the vocabulary of tourism, the kinds of desires that vocabulary seems designed to ignite, and the promises made, and how those promises change or vanish altogether depending on who you are.” The Paris Review interviews Laura van den Berg about writing, tourism, and her new novel, The Third Hotel. From our archives: our 2015 interview with van den Berg.
Biological Music
“Seaquence is an experiment in musical composition. Adopting a biological metaphor, you can create and combine musical lifeforms resulting in an organic, dynamic composition.”
Friday Night Filibusters
Going Clear author Lawrence Wright is adapting his play, Sonny’s Last Shot, to develop an HBO series about “the crazy, brutal world of Texas politics,” reports Deadline.
Harper Lee’s Hullabaloo
There’s been an incredible amount of both excitement and controversy ever since Harper Lee‘s publisher announced the upcoming publication of Go Set a Watchman, the reclusive author’s second novel. But in a piece for Ploughshares Cathe Shubert wonders “Why not marvel at what all this hullabaloo in the news really signifies: that books still matter, deeply, to the American public–especially books that spark dialogue about interracial relations, justice, and, as Atticus would say, walking in another person’s shoes.”
Buy Debt Without Going Into Debt
David Graeber’s Debt (which was just reviewed in the New York Review of Books) is available at a 40% discount all weekend long.