In 1994, Maya Angelou cooked a meal of crowder peas, okra, and beef for a crowd of 150 people. The dinner was in honor of Toni Morrison—who had been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature the previous year—and U.S. Poet Laureate Rita Dove. Although Angelou is less often associated with cooking and food writing, she would go on to write two underrated cookbooks, Mayukh Sen writes in an article for The Guardian. In Hallelujah! The Welcome Table and Great Food, All Day Long, Angelou’s food writing “hums with the same vibrancy that marks her more prominent work.”
Maya Angelou in the Kitchen
Dough Country For Old Men
Taking its name from one of our heat-wave puns earlier this summer, the blog As I Lay Frying pairs literary quotes with pictures of doughnuts.
●
●
On Turning “Perhaps” into Certainty
“The heart belongs to the tide and the deep alone”
The upcoming Supreme Court decision on gay marriage is drawing a lot of attention. But what about the other ruling — the one aimed at grizzled old men? At The Onion, a report on Justice Alito’s recent decision, which tersely states that marriage is a pact between a man and the sea.
●
●
Sacred Literature
“Ideas are interesting to me, and religions are a place where ideas have been very subtly embodied for thousands of years. All literature started as sacred literature.” Alexandra Alter interviews Salman Rushdie about his brand-new novel, Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights.
Miles Klee Gets Interviewed All Over the Place
Ivyland author (and enthusiastic Tumblr-er) Miles Klee was interviewed by Matt Hackett, and a snippet was posted on Tumblr’s new Storyboard blog. If you like what you see, you can get even more from Klee courtesy of his recent Other People Podcast with Brad Listi.
●
●
Tuesday New Release Day: Messud; Wang; Tallent; Rothmann; Handler
Out this week: The Burning Girl by Claire Messud; The Hidden Light of Northern Fires by Daren Wang; My Absolute Darling by Gabriel Tallent; To Die in Spring by Ralf Rothmann; and All the Dirty Parts by Daniel Handler. For more on these and other new titles, go read our most recent book preview.
●
●