Thoreau the Magical Realist, Embracing Ambivalence, and More
Iraq war veterans on writing fiction; college students prefer print books to digital; racy Tagore translation pulled from Chinese stores; and other news.
Jump to navigation Skip to content
Iraq war veterans on writing fiction; college students prefer print books to digital; racy Tagore translation pulled from Chinese stores; and other news.
National Book Foundation launches program for LGBTQ teens; Tournament of Books brackets posted; Robert Lowell’s complicated relationships with women; and other news.
Tim Parks on the state of translation; five ways Infinite Jest predicted the future; T. S. Eliot’s notes on detective fiction; and other news.
Life-changing books; Penguin Random House sells its self-publishing division; recent study shows people prefer books to their movie adaptations; and other news.
Three Amazon series based on books; new Jonathan Safran Foer coming next fall; PANK editors bid farewell; and other news.

BuzzFeed’s newly minted executive editor of culture discusses his new position at the media company, and his goals for the recently launched BuzzFeed Emerging Writers Fellowship.

The latest installment of Reviewers & Critics features Michael Schaub, an incisive—and hilarious—literary critic and former Bookslut contributor.
Her new book of essays, The Givenness of Things, is further proof that Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist Marilynne Robinson is writing with an entirely different level of intellectual and creative rigor.
Five editors of independent presses specializing in translation discuss how they find new work from around the world, the challenges they face as publishers, and the future of literary translation.
If there’s one thing that bores Dean Young, it’s poetry that is consistent. “Consistency is for insects,” he declares. Which is why in his new collection, Shock by Shock, published this month by Copper Canyon Press, the poet doesn’t dwell on the traumatic heart surgery he endured four years ago, but instead embraces the freedom of unreason.