Key points In her new book “Acceptance,” author Emi Nietfeld tells her story growing up in the foster care system. She pushes back on the American “rags to riches” myth, reflecting on how her journey isn’t possible for most. At times experiencing suicidal thoughts, she turned to writing to light the way out and advocate […]
Key points In her new book “Acceptance,” author Emi Nietfeld tells her story growing up in the foster care system. She pushes back on the American “rags to riches” myth, reflecting on how her journey isn’t possible for most. At times experiencing suicidal thoughts, she turned to writing to light the way out and advocate […]
A woman reading a braille book. / Westend61/Westend61/Getty Images Braille is a tactile system that blind people use to learn to read and write, invented in 1824 by a blind French educator named Louis Braille. He revolutionized an existing writing and reading system that allowed blind people to enjoy books and communication. I certainly don’t […]
The following is from Victoria Kielland’s My Men . Kielland’s first book, the 2013 short prose collection I lyngen (In the Heather) was shortlisted for the Tarjei Vesaas debutant prize. In 2016, Kielland’s first novel Dammyr (Marsh Pond) was shortlisted for the Youth Critics’ Prize and the literary committee of the Norwegian Authors’ Union awarded […]
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) When is it a good idea to be nobody? There are some situations where it certainly pays to be Nobody, or rather, to claim to be ‘No One’. And one of the most famous episodes involving wily Odysseus (or Ulysses, as he was known to the Romans) bears this […]
WHALEFALL , by Daniel Kraus In marine biology, a whale fall is the body of a dead whale that has slowly descended to the bottom of the ocean. Scavengers strip its flesh, crustaceans and other creatures colonize its skeleton and its decaying bones help sustain countless organisms for years to come, part of the delicate […]
An image of five brown, crooked-branched trees with salmon-colored leaves, against a mostly green background; the negative space between the trees suggests silhouette portraits of four women. Are you in possession of a hammock? A creaky old porch swing? A bay window with built-in seating? If not, Ann Patchett’s new novel, “Tom Lake,” will situate […]
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘The Silence of the Sirens’ is a very short story by Franz Kafka (1883-1924), written in 1917 but doomed, like so much of his work, to languish in his notebooks before being published after his death. This retelling of a famous myth from classical antiquity is idiosyncratic and worthy […]
Writer, teacher, and publisher Jennifer Lewis discusses being present, not being precious, getting better with age, and what you can learn from helping others. Your short story collection just came out, and you also run Red Light Lit which is both an event series for the community, and a small press. I know you also […]
Manhattan Beach Six-Man Volleyball Tournament. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, Licensed under CCO 3.0. Soon it will be August in New York City, a period when everyone is theoretically out of town—they’re always saying this, anyway, in books like August by Judith Rossner. This is mostly a fiction, that everyone’s at their country house and everything […]
