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In this short video, filmmaker and author Miranda July talks about Snarla, a feminist punk zine she created with Johanna Fateman while living in Berkeley, California. Their zine as well as other zines and works are on view in Copy Machine Manifestos: Artists Who Make Zines at the Brooklyn Museum through March.
Do you recall cold, quiet nights with the muffled silence of snow and the whisper of the wind, or the banging clang of heating pipes and the constant drumming of a heavy rainstorm rumbling in the winter? Depending on one’s locale, the sounds of the season can present a range of tones, from the euphonic to the cacophonic, from peaceful and calming to abrasive and exasperating. Write a poem that captures the sonic spectrum of your surroundings at this time of year, perhaps experimenting with punctuation, various line lengths and spacing, and onomatopoeia to reflect all the textures of your auditory experience.
“The reason I’m so terrified of what’s happening around me is because I’m so in love with the world.” In this 2023 Lost City Books virtual event, Franny Choi reads from their latest poetry collection, The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On (Ecco, 2023), and discusses the futurist politics of poetry, the present need for Black and Asian solidarity, and the battle between hope and despair in a conversation with Danez Smith.
The author of Family Family explores why tired tropes proliferate in fiction—and how to avoid them.
In this event celebrating Sandra Cisneros, winner of the 2023 Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation’s Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award, the author reads from her latest poetry collection, Woman Without Shame (Knopf, 2022), and speaks about her writing career with Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden.
In this 2023 London Review of Books event, Emily Wilson reads from and discusses her translation of The Iliad by Homer, published in September by Norton, and how she wishes to present Homer to a new generation in a conversation with classicist and historian Edith Hall. Passages from Wilson’s translation are also read by actors Tobias Menzies and Juliet Stevenson.
Journalist Zahra Hankir’s book, Eyeliner: A Cultural History (Penguin Books, 2023), traces the lineage of eye makeup from its ancient Egyptian origins to contemporary times, zigzagging across a wide-ranging swath of globalism, fashion, and celebrity—from Nefertiti to Amy Winehouse—while relating the implications of the cosmetic accessory to themes of feminine performance and Orientalism. Choose an accessory or stylistic embellishment that has played some role in your own life, or perhaps one that is culturally pervasive or resonant. Consider your relationship to this seemingly frivolous item and write a personal essay about its relevance and connection to your identity. How might you connect the dots to larger social issues and historic moments in time?
In this episode of Poured Over: The Barnes & Noble Podcast hosted by Miwa Messer, author Rachel Heng discusses her latest novel, The Great Reclamation (Riverhead Books, 2023), and talks about writing fiction that is both historical and speculative, and how she uses notecards to organize writing her gargantuan novels.
Twentieth-century artist Isamu Noguchi worked across many disciplines—costume and stage design, landscape architecture, drawing, ceramics, and furniture—and is renowned for his wide-ranging and experimental sculptures. Noguchi was influenced by many subjects from Greek mythology, Biblical figures, ancient architecture and archaeology, natural phenomena, artists and musicians, and animals and plants. One of his sculptures titled “Gregory” is named after the protagonist of Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis, who shape-shifts into a giant insect. Browse through Noguchi’s online catalogue raisonné to find a sculpture that catches your eye and write a story inspired by the artwork. Feel free to go beyond a literal interpretation, perhaps using the piece’s title as a launchpad for a surrealist or Kafkaesque tale.
Watch the trailer for the television adaptation of Australian journalist and author Trent Dalton’s novel Boy Swallows Universe (Harper, 2019). The Netflix limited series follows a young boy growing up in the suburbs of 1980s Brisbane facing the harsh realities of life and his family.
