“But the civil rights movement didn’t stop in Selma.” In a follow-up to March, his award-winning graphic novel trilogy, Congressman John Lewis will have a new series published later this year by Abrams ComicArt, according to Time. Run, which will also be a multi-book series, will pick up where March left off. Pair with: The Millions‘s review of March.
First He Marched, Now He’ll Run
Alyssa Cole on Leaning Into Anxiety
Alyssa Cole discusses her new book, When No One Is Watching, and the difference between writing romances and thrillers.
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The New New Inquiry
The New Inquiry‘s updated site launched over the weekend, and it’s currently undergoing a live beta test. They’ve also just unveiled a bumper crop of new bloggers. One of the site’s interesting features is that all of its content is available for sharing and remixing under a creative commons license.
Why Reading
“Unlike, say, skimming a page of headlines, reading a book (of any genre) forces your brain to think critically and make connections from one chapter to another, and to the outside world. When you make connections, so does your brain, literally forging new pathways between regions in all four lobes and both hemispheres. Over time, these neural networks can promote quicker thinking and may provide a greater defense against the worst effects of cognitive decay.” Readers Digest compiles the latest research about why you should read (via Book Riot).
Musa Okwonga Does Not Strive to Be Universal
Author and poet Musa Okwonga discusses In the End, It Was All About Love, a book that required him to be comfortable with the unknown.
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Eleanor & Park & Censorship
Right on the edge of Banned Books Week, Rainbow Rowell discusses when Minneapolis’s Anoka-Hennepin school district, the county board, and the local library board censored her from coming to speak about her YA novel Eleanor & Park. “When these people call Eleanor & Park an obscene story, I feel like they’re saying that rising above your situation isn’t possible,” she says.
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The Contrived
It’s a common saying among actors that the script does most of the work. Which raises an interesting question: is it possible for a great writer to make art out of a bad story? At The Kenyon Review’s blog, Amit Majmudar says it is, using Shakespeare as proof. Related: five experts on the Bard’s greatest plays.
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“How should intellectuals write about acts of immense depravity?”
This is a fantastic piece on W. H. Auden, “The Murder of Lidice”, and the importance of the ideological and political contexts of war. Joanna Bourke writes, “the flood of poems [after the Lidice massacre] actually served to draw attention away from the people of Lidice and towards the swollen sensibilities of the poets and their readers.”
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