J.K. Rowling’s first book was published 20 years ago today. Did it create better readers, or just more of them?
Literature
Posted inArts & Culture, Food, Nonfiction, Quotes
Following John McPhee’s Path to ‘Oranges’
Fifty years after he published Oranges, one writer traces McPhee’s story to Florida to assess the state of American citrus.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Haruki Murakami’s Advice to Young Writers
In the essay “So What Shall I Write About?” from Monkey Business magazine, Haruki Murakami gives readers a glimpse into his creative process and how to become a novelist.
Posted inNonfiction, Profiles & Interviews, Quotes, Unapologetic Women
Dorothy Allison on How America Devalues Those Who are ‘Other’
Dorothy Allison on how American culture “inherently devalues the poor, the working class, the darks, the queer, the other.”
Posted inBooks, Profiles & Interviews, Story
The Story of Memory: An Interview with Paula Hawkins
Paula Hawkins, author of The Girl on The Train and Into the Water, reflects on two unreliable things: narrators and memory.
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Feminine Heroic
Megan Mayhew Bergman explores how women, often excluded from adventure narratives, carve out their own heroic space.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Margaret Atwood: The Prophet of Dystopia
At The New Yorker, Rebecca Mead profiles Margaret Atwood — Canada’s prolific queen of literature. Mead and Atwood cover the resonance of The Handmaid’s Tale in Donald Trump’s America, Atwood’s approach to feminism, and the purpose of fiction in today’s society. Beloved for her incisive mind along with her works, Atwood uses unlimited curiosity as […]
Posted inArts & Culture, Nonfiction, Quotes
One Novelist Remembers Her Moment
The cover was striking: it showed a syringe. On the back cover one character leaned over a table, snorting cocaine. The calls from radio stations began, the advertising spots, the letters, above all the letters. Girls telling me about their first acid trip. Gay guys who’d been thrown out of their houses. Girls in love […]
Posted inNonfiction
‘Trilby,’ the Novel That Gave Us ‘Svengali’
George du Maurier’s Trilby, published in 1894, became one of the most popular novels of its time. The story introduced us to a young heroine, Trilby, and a memorable villain, Svengali, whose names have since taken on lives of their own.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
You Are What You Eat, Or, Haruki Murakami on Food As a Reflection of the Self
At The Awl, Elaheh Nozari explores food in the work of Haruki Murakami: how food not only offers comfort and nutrition, but about how what we eat speaks to our emotional state and who we are as people.