For Electric Literature, Amy Klein discusses being a debut author during the coronavirus quarantine, as bookstores close and events are canceled for the public’s safety. Despite her panic, she learns to get creative when promoting her new book, The Trying Game: Get Through Fertility Treatment and Get Pregnant Without Losing Your Mind. “Ultimately, this may not be as devastating for writers—or independent bookstores—as it initially felt to me,” Klein writes. “Authors can boost themselves, each other, and small bookstores on social media, and reach a captive audience who may be searching for distraction during a socially distant time.”
A Book’s Debut Amidst a Pandemic
“I’ve known you and known you and known you.”
Recommended Reading: Delaney Nolan’s recent piece in Guernica, “How I Gonna Bare My Neck Outside in the Sweat-Scared Morning.”
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Leah Hampton on the Bifurcated Vantage Point
Leah Hampton discusses her debut collection, F*ckface: And Other Stories, which takes a closer look at lives in the modern-day American South.
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Freeplay
StoryBundle, a new service that lets you pay as much (or as little) as you want for preselected bundles of ebooks, announced on Wednesday that their latest bundle is a collection of writing about video games. Among other things, it includes two books by Jordan Mechner, the man behind Prince of Persia, as well as two issues of Kill Screen.
Literature from the Forever Wars
“All war literature, across the centuries, bears witness to certain eternal truths: the death and chaos encountered, minute by minute; the bonds of love and loyalty among soldiers; the bad dreams and worse anxieties that afflict many of those lucky enough to return home.” In an omnibus review for The New York Times Michiko Kakutani looks at the fiction and journalism being written about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, including recent Year in Reading alum and National Book Award winner Phil Klay‘s Redeployment and Dexter Filkins’s The Forever War, “the one book that most fluently and kaleidoscopically captures both the micro and the macro of Iraq.” She also wonders, and attempts to explain, “why has there been no big, symphonic Iraq or Afghanistan novel?”
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The Scanner, Darkly
A used-book flipper, armed with a laser scanner and a PDA, delineates the unease he feels about the odd profession he has chosen.
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Welcome Jacob!
We’re welcoming another regular to The Millions. You’ll recognize Jacob Lambert from his ongoing series “The Road (A Comedic Translation),” and he’ll be doing more humor pieces for us as well as whatever else he comes up with. Jacob has written for MAD Magazine for several years. He also has a regular column in Philly Weekly and freelances for various other publications. Welcome Jacob!
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Jason Reynolds on the Language of Discussing Racism with Kids
Jason Reynolds discusses the goal behind writing a nuanced book on racism for children with Ibram X. Kendi.
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