Why a Campaign to ‘Reclaim’ Women Writers’ Names Is So Controversial “Critics say Reclaim Her Name fails to reflect the array of reasons authors chose to publish under male pseudonyms” Nora McGreevy reports in Smithsonian Magazine about the Reclaim Her Name project recently launched by the Women’s Prize for Fiction in conjunction with Baileys (of Irish […]
Is the literary trend toward passive women progress? Maybe we’ve been misreading Lynn Steger Strong writes that Rachel Cusk’s Outline trilogy “broke open a new and surprisingly vital form: the novel of passivity.” Strong is happy to see that, for the last decade or so, women’s fiction has been recognized for probing what the novel—“forms
Today marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of author Ray Bradbury. “I can imagine all kinds of worlds and places, but I cannot imagine a world without Bradbury.” Neil Gaiman To celebrate this event, writers, actors, and librarians will present the Ray Bradbury Centennial Read-a-Thon from August 22 through September 5, 2020. “I was
Ray Bradbury’s 100th Birthday Read More »
Viewing Literature as a Lab for Community Ethics The COVID-19 pandemic has brought to the forefront many bioethical questions, such as, when resources are limited, which lives should be saved and which sacrificed? Maren Tova Linett, author of Literary Bioethics, argues that fiction, with its ability to present imagined worlds, offers the chance to explore
Crime Fiction Trains Us for Crisis Writer Sulari Gentill says that, since crime fiction “essentially tells the story of a crisis,” is has helped to prepare us for the world we all now find ourselves in. This year we have already faced fire, flood and pandemic. We had fled our homes and been confined to
Time Is Not Real: Books That Play with the Art of Time Vivienne Woodward looks at some books that manipulate our sense of time. The inspiration for this essay is the way COVID-19 lockdown has affected her perception of time: One of the things reading fiction makes clear is how many ways there are to
Summer reading has a fraught history. But if there was ever a time to delight in escapism, it’s now Wisdom from Ron Charles, book critic for the Washington Post: The shame of summer reading is almost as old as summer reading itself. It took humanity 200,000 years to produce movable type, widespread literacy and enough
‘Killing People in Fiction Was Fun’: Mysteries That Have Stood the Test of Time Like many of us, Sarah Weinman initially thought that the coronavirus lockdown would allow her to read, read, read. And also like many of us, she soon discovered that “Focus has evaporated. The cognitive load of living through the coronavirus has
The Economics of Coronavirus: A Reading List I’ve been thinking a lot about what the world will look like once the COVID-19 pandemic is over, but my speculations are mostly social and political. I know absolutely nothing about economics beyond balancing my checkbook, which is why I took particular notice of this article from Five
