At NPR, Ramtin Arablouei reflects on the the urgency of Octavia Butler‘s novels and why her work calls on us to use our greatest power: to change. “As we celebrate Black History Month, we should also remember her as a prophetic visionary like so many before her,” Arablouei writes. “She imagined worlds like the one we are living in, but encouraged each of us to dream our own dreams and to respond to the fear of uncertainty with creativity and bravery. As the Earthseed maxim tells us, ‘All that you touch, You Change …'”
The Prophetic Visions of Octavia E. Butler
Winesburg, Ohio Online
The University of Virginia Library (last mentioned for its William Faulkner recordings) has made the text of Sherwood Anderson‘s Winesburg, Ohio available online in its entirety.
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Write / Right / Night / Owl
Kathryn Schulz’s meditation on insomnia, on staying up late and writing deep into the night.
Known Knowns
Literary fame is a knotty thing. It’s hard to predict exactly who will be known for centuries, and why. William Wordsworth, for example, owes at least part of his fame to the Lake District, which started to use him in their tourist campaigns not long after his death. In The New Yorker, Joshua Rothman takes a look at H.J. Jackson’s Those Who Write for Immortality. Related: Gina Fattore’s recent essay on fame and money.
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Mark Twain’s Posthumous Career
Roger Boylan at the Boston Review writes about the flourishing posthumous career of Mark Twain: “…more than 5,000 previously unknown letters of Twain’s have surfaced in the last 50 years. This represents an average of two new letters per week, but still only about one-tenth of the 50,000 or so he is believed to have written.” And at Slate, Craig Fehrman discusses the “brilliant brand management” behind the handling of Twain’s autobiography.
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Qiu Miaojin and the Existential Wonder of the Immigrant Narrative
Ocean Vuong recommends Last Words from Montmarte by Qiu Miaojin, a series of letters that explores culture, language, and gender.
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Shopping’s Scrivener
“I’m used to writing in very weird contexts.” Poet Brian Sonia-Wallace talks with Minnesota’s Star Tribune about his gig as the Mall of America’s first-ever writer in residence. Asked if he’ll go crazy during his several-day-long tenure, Sonia-Wallace answered “probably” (via Bookforum). Our own Marie Myung-Ok Lee had some opinions back when the residency was first announced.