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As the presidential election approaches, our national hand-wringing has ramped up and everyone is once again focused on the perennial question: What makes America America? Two recent literary anthologies show just how far this popular introspection reaches into our creative communities of writers and artists.
A writer doesn't work for four decades, publish ten books, and win the Nobel Prize without developing a healthy dose of skepticism. This attitude, combined with the confidence to disregard critics, has made Toni Morrison stronger than ever.
For Ethan Canin, writing has never been easy—or, for that matter, pleasurable. Despite the sprawling achievement of America America, his newest novel might just be his last.
Citizen journalists, often blogging in real time, have forced an expansion of creative nonfiction by influencing public opinion on important issues such as the presidential campaign.
While it's safe to say the twenty-first century has so far not been a great time for American diplomacy, a handful of new poetry anthologies, from Norton, Dalkey Archive Press, North Atlantic Books, and Graywolf Press, offer proof that American poetic diplomacy might be entering a new golden age.
Five years ago, as poets and readers attended the annual StAnza poetry festival, the war began in Iraq. This year’s festival, held from March 12 to March 16, acknowledged that anniversary explicitly with its two themes, “Poetry & Conflict” and “Sea of Tongues.”
Can political fiction matter? Stephen Elliott, the editor of Politically Inspired, an anthology published by MacAdam/Cage in 2003, and its follow-up, Stumbling and Raging: More Politically Inspired Fiction, published by MacAdam/Cage this month, casts his vote in the “definitely yes” column.
Poet Susan Atefat-Peckham and her six-year-old son were killed in a car accident in Ghor Safi, Jordan, on February 7, 2004. A professor in the MFA program at Georgia College & State University, Atefat-Peckham was in the Middle East as a Fulbright scholar teaching creative writing at the University of Jordan. She was 33. The following Direct Quote was originally posted on October 12, 2001, following the publication of her book That Kind of Sleep.
Mark Doty's work has always straddled the line between a sense of belonging and alienation, so it's no surprise to find the crucial question, Where do I live? at the heart of his forthcoming book
In 1995 Brian Henry joined forces with Andrew Zawacki to resurrect Verse magazine. In 2000 he elicited the help of Matthew Zapruder and co-founded Verse Press. Along the way Henry, an assistant professor of English and director of the creative writing program at the University of Georgia, established a broad international reputation, both for his editorial and critical efforts, and for his sizable creative output.
