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“It had started as a family joke: Dad always orders the mixed grill in restaurants, Dad only wants to go to restaurants with mixed grill on the menu.” Patricia Lockwood, poet and author of the memoir Priestdaddy (Riverhead Books, 2017), performs a dramatic reading of a passage from Jonathan Franzen’s novel The Corrections (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001) for the literary nonprofit O, Miami.
At the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival, contestants gather to yell “Stella!” in tribute to Williams’s play A Streetcar Named Desire for their annual “shouting contest.”
Margarita Engle named new Young People’s Poet Laureate; the enduring relevance of Czeslaw Milosz’s political analysis; the legacy of Robert Hayden; and other news.
The Met Gala is an annual fundraiser held in May to celebrate the opening of the Costume Institute’s fashion exhibit. The Gala is known for the elaborate attire of its guests, like the 2017 looks from pop icons Rihanna and Zendaya. Write a story that includes a scene in which a character briefly wears an elaborate outfit or costume. How might the clothing change the way they understand themselves? How might it change the way other characters view them?
“And if you can’t keep secrets from your family, who can you keep secrets from?” In this video, Jonathan Safran Foer reads excerpts from his novel Here I Am (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016) at Salon@615 in Nashville.
Director William Friedkin retraces Proust’s footsteps; Utah governor appoints Paisley Rekdal state poet laureate; the American Writers Museum opens today with a W. S. Merwin exhibit; and other news.
Poet Tommy Pico redefines nature poetry in his new collection; Wisconsin makes May 12 Lorine Niedecker Day; the golden age of Chinese science fiction; and other news.
Harry Potter prequel story stolen; Edan Lepucki collects photos of mothers before they were mothers; Karen Kosztolnyik named new editor of Grand Central Publishing; and other news.
The Dark Tower is a film sequel to Stephen King’s eight-novel series of the same name, which was published between 1982 and 2004 and inspired by Robert Browning’s poem “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came.” Directed by Nikolaj Arcel and starring Idris Elba, Matthew McConaughey, and Katheryn Winnick, the film will premiere in August.
