“Somehow, in my eagerness to honor these words, I’d tamed the political intentions behind their meaning. I’d reduced my icon’s truths into affirmational pick-me-ups rather than letting them sink deeper.” Dianca Potts reflects on how to best to appreciate the fullness of Maya Angelou, Audre Lorde and Toni Morrison. We need to resist erasing their complexities in our haste to embrace them as icons or reduce them to inspirational quotes.
Celebrating, Not Sanitizing, Complicated Women Writers
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PEN Literary Awards Shortlist
PEN America has announced the shortlist of this year’s PEN literary awards. The 2016 finalists include Millions contributors Angela Flournoy, Katrina Dodson, Viet Thanh Nguyen, and David L. Ulin, among others.
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A Not-So Moveable Feast
Have you visited the legendary Shakespeare and Company bookstore in Paris? Were you aware that bookstore you visited is not actually that same legendary Shakespeare and Company? Erin Zaleski at The Daily Beast takes a look at the history of this literary institution of the Lost Generation.
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Translating Lorem Ipsum
Nick Richardson has some fun on the London Review of Books blog by discussing the challenges of translating Lorem Ipsum, a bit of filler Latin/Greek nonsense text that resembles an “extreme Mallarmé, or a Burroushian cut-up, or a paragraph of Finnegans Wake.”
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A Taste of Saudade
William Kelley, a Lost Literary Giant
"I didn’t know who William Kelley was when I found that book but, like millions of Americans, I knew a term he is credited with first committing to print. 'If You’re Woke, You Dig It' read the headline of a 1962 Op-Ed that Kelley published in the New York Times, in which he pointed out that much of what passed for “beatnik” slang (“dig,” “chick,” “cool”) originated with African-Americans." Are you familiar with William Kelley? Let Kathryn Schulz be your guide on this historical literary adventure as she discovers an immensely influential writer whom most of us have never heard mentioned.