At the Creative Independent, Melissa Lozada-Oliva discusses her new novel in verse, Dreaming of You, and the role poetry plays in keeping us attuned to the beauty around us. “I think poetry is about, for me, remembering the beauty of the world. I have the capacity to do it endlessly. Sometimes I’m like, is that fucked up? Should I just be, like, this sucks. Everything fucking blows. But I feel like poetry’s job is for beauty. And I think that is important. I think it keeps us human. I don’t think it saves the world. I think that’s impossible.”
Melissa Lozada-Oliva’s Remembers the Beauty of the World Through Poetry
Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Tangled Legacy
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, author of The Yellow Wall-Paper and Herland, is known for her feminist classics—but she was also a devotee of eugenics.
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The Library of the Future
If you’re looking forward to the next Margaret Atwood novel, you’ll have to wait a century. Atwood is the first author to participate in the Future Library project, in which 100 authors will write 100 original manuscripts to be published 100 years from now. We’re envious of our grandchildren. If you’d like an Atwood fix sooner, her short story collection Stone Mattress: Nine Tales comes out next week.
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Democrats and the Written Word
Jill Lepore brings a critical eye to the memoirs of 2020's Democratic presidential candidates, including Pete Buttigieg and Elizabeth Warren.
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Pop-Hop Books & Curio
Coming in 2012: Pop-Hop Books & Curio. Located in the Highland Park neighborhood on the east side of Los Angeles, Pop-Hop will be “a creative retail environment merging a bookstore and project space.” More information, as well as some opportunities to support the project, are available at the shop’s Kickstarter page, and also on its Facebook page.
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Literary Maps of Another Kind
In anticipation of Adam Sternbergh’s novel, Shovel Ready, Chris Bilton and Sarah Liss collaborated on “the ultimate N.Y.C. dystopia map,” which serves as an amalgamation of “some of the darkest visions of the city.” Meanwhile, Jacob Silverman points us to a map of St. Petersburg, Russia, “made out of lines from Russian literature.” (Bonus: Sternbergh discusses his novel with the Los Angeles Times.)