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"She could taste with all of her skin, including her eyelids." Author and naturalist Sy Montgomery describes her first meeting with Athena, a giant Pacific octopus, at the New England Aquarium in Boston. This encounter spurred her to write The Soul of an Octopus (Atria Books, 2015), a finalist for the 2015 National Book Award for Nonfiction.
Gregory Pardlo and Tracy K. Smith in conversation; American Booksellers Association launches test to increase indie bookstore traffic; Carrie Brownstein on her new memoir; and other news.
Research a paranormal story or legend native to your community. Write an essay that meditates on its origins, its historical context, how it characterizes your community today, and what reservations or questions it stirs up in you. Whether you’re the deepest skeptic or the most willing believer, how you engage with these supernatural tales can reveal a lot about your mind and imagination.
The poetry of John Wieners and John Updike; presidential candidates as the books they sound like; fairytales and the fear of female power; and other news.
In these trenchant and whimsical lectures, Nabokov taps into the craft behind such European classics as Madame Bovary, Bleak House, and Ulysses. With an introduction by John Updike, this collection includes lectures as valuable for their content as they are for their delivery.
This week, create your own unique holiday, then write a piece of flash fiction about it. Include any traditions or customs that may be involved, and the story behind them. Is the main event a special feast, a bacchanalia, or a time to let loose an alter ego? Is it a day of celebration or contemplation? Explore what this holiday represents for the people who observe it.
Patrick Phillips reads "Matinee" from his poetry collection Boy (University of Georgia Press, 2008) and speaks about what drew him to poetry. His latest book, Elegy for a Broken Machine (Knopf, 2015), is a finalist for the 2015 National Book Award.
Whiting Foundation appoints new board president; HBO picks up adaptation of Cheryl Strayed’s Tiny Beautiful Things; President Obama and Marilynne Robinson’s conversation continued; and other news.
After All Hallows’ Eve comes All Saints’ Day. The good news: Hagiography is a treasure trove of unique material for poems. Write a poem in the voice of a famous saint who has returned for this day. What would he or she make of the modern world? Would the remnants of present-day Halloween festivities leave the saint perplexed, mystified, even horrified? Challenge yourself to make the common rituals of modern life seem foreign and charged with possible meaning.
"It's somewhere between Seinfeld and Black Swan." In this humorous book trailer for Sloane Crosley's debut novel, The Clasp (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015), actress Amanda Seyfried does a spoof on book blurbs.
