July/August 2020

A campaign started by James Patterson has raised more than $1.2 million to help indie bookstores struggling to stay afloat during the pandemic.

The Book Traces project at the University of Virginia documents annotations, marks, and objects found in library books, creating a record of readers’ engagement with the book as a physical object.

The first lines of a dozen noteworthy books including Seeing the Body by Rachel Eliza Griffiths and Parakeet by Marie-Helene Bertino.

With the spread of COVID-19, organizers of literary events across the United States have devised creative ways to move programming online and build community among writers.

The press publishes immersive, imaginative chapbooks of poetry, prose, and art, which are printed and folded in the style of a map.

Writers have been cooking up a bright array of foods, from strawberry chiffon cake to Sichuan chili fish, while heeding orders to stay at home during the pandemic. 

Poet Keetje Kuipers, the new editor in chief of Poetry Northwest, shares her plans for bringing a sense of play and risk to the Pacific Northwest’s oldest literary magazine. 

The author of the essay collection A History of My Brief Body and the poetry collection This Wound Is a World on five journals that have published his poems and essays. 

Write a poem with the help of Merriam-Webster’s Time Traveler tool, a short story split into parts by the passing of a decade, and an essay that describes memorable photos.

Thirteen writers, including Alexandra Kleeman, Ada Límon, and Nicole Sealey, describe writing—or not writing—during the early months of the coronavirus pandemic.