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A Walt Whitman "freak-out jam" takes place in Brooklyn, New York, tonight; W. S. Merwin is appointed U.S. poet laureate; Christopher Hitchens cancels his book tour to undergo cancer treatment; scientists name a prehistoric whale after Herman Melville; and other news.
One writer's monthlong journey with her family from her home on the Gulf Coast to three different cities as she searches for a respite from the storm, meeting others along the way whose loss puts hers in perspective.
A writer who stayed in the French Quarter during and after Katrina measures the spirit of America’s oldest Bohemia before its reincarnation.
The Federal Writers' Project was established seventy-five years ago, and according to one author and documentary filmmaker, it was a watershed event, if not a turning point, in the history of American literature. Employing up to 7,500 people annually during its four-year run, the Writers’ Project nurtured a generation of authors who otherwise might have been forced into nonliterary careers.
The Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative recently announced that this year’s mentor in literature, German writer Hans Magnus Enzensberger, has chosen as his protégée American poet Tracy K. Smith. This is the fifth year a mentorship has been awarded to a writer, and the first time the winning writer has hailed from the United States.
On the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, several local and national arts organizations, including the Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society and the Poetry Society of America, are presenting readings in New Orleans to commemorate all that was lost—the lives, homes, businesses, and communities—and to celebrate a flourishing of the literary arts in the area since the storm.
In this regular feature, we offer a few suggestions for podcasts, smartphone apps, Web tools, newsletters, museum shows, and gallery openings: a medley of literary curiosities that you might enjoy.
Apple’s entry into the e-book market has given publishers the leverage they needed to force a marketwide shift from a wholesale to an “agency” model of e-book retailing, but the long-term impact of the move—for both publishers and authors—remains unclear.
An editor reveals how the best agents—Molly Friedrich, Jud Laghi, Chris Parris-Lamb, Scott Moyers, and Jennifer Joel among them—work behind the scenes to help their clients’ books get the attention they deserve.
In the fourth installment of our series Inside Indie Bookstores,
contributor Jeremiah Chamberlin travels to Milwaukee to talk with Daniel Goldin, owner of Boswell Book Company.
