The founder of Well-Read Black Girl, Glory Edim, spoke to HuffPost‘s “We Built This” series on her passion for literacy and the urgency of protecting black women: “There’s a vastness to blackness that needs to be recognized, especially in media, especially in literature, in film. […] We need more artists who are willing to share their imaginations with us and see blackness in a more beautiful and profound way.” Our own Martha Anne Toll recently spoke to Edim as well about the recent Well-Read Black Girl anthology.
Glory Edim’s Empire of Knowledge
‘Tis the Season…
If your honey-bun doesn’t need another iPod or bottle of perfume this Christmas, consider Heifer International, a non-profit that lets you give the gift of heifers, sheep, goats, bees, rabbits, or water buffalo.
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Book & Beer
To kick off German Literature Month, Melville House’s marketing manager picked the best beers to drink as you read Heinrich Böll. Now Dogfish Head’s brewmaster Sam Calagione has paired beers with a few other literary classics.
For the Imagination Impaired
If your ego is so large that it blots out your ability to identify with characters who don’t bear your own name U Star Novels offers a solution. The company will replace the names of characters in famous novels with those of your family and friends.
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Like Something in the Movies
Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita is one of those rare few classic novels that translates well to the big screen. To some extent, this was intentional — Nabokov often wrote fiction with an eye to selling film rights. John Colapinto writes about the author’s relationship with the cinema over at Page-Turner. You could also read our own Lydia Kiesling’s Modern Library Revue of Lolita.
Late American Novel Fans
Word is there have been sightings of the book I co-edited The Late American Novel: Writers on the Future of Books in the wild, though it’s officially due in March. You can keep up on all the news about the book, including events and links to excerpts on the book’s new Facebook page.
Reading Through Trauma
“My whole life, I had used stories, both my own and other people’s, to check out of grocery store lines and long bus trips, stints in doctors’ waiting rooms, heartache, my own depression, and finally of the tedious exhaustion of new motherhood. Now, here I was in this 15-by-20 room, where monitors and alarms were constantly beeping, and there was no way out, except the unimaginable.” Alyson Foster, author of Heart Attack Watch, writes about her son’s illness and her love of reading.
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