March 21, 2013
The Library of Congress has just released a list of 25 sound recordings that will be preserved for the long term. The song Sounds of Silence, by Simon and Garfunkel, written just after the JFK assassination, is included along with such iconic recordings as Chubby Checker’s energetic The Twist, the original cast album of South […]
March 20, 2013
Benjamin Alire Sáenz has won this year’s PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for his short story collection, Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club. The judges considered more than 350 novels and short story collections by American authors published during 2012. Finalists included Amelia Gray for her novel Threats ; Laird Hunt, author of Kind […]
March 19, 2013
The Ernest Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park is seeking a writer to use the renovated attic space of Hemingway’s birthplace in Oak Park, IL for a year. The foundation sees this as a chance to promote Hemingway’s legacy in a thoughtful way. It’s not intended as a substitute home, but rather as a workplace and […]
March 19, 2013
I have always had a small spot in my heart for palindromes, those strange puzzles in which the letters appear in the same order forward and backward. Example: A man, a plan, a canal: Panama. Wouldn’t you know the winners of the new Symmys contest were announced recently? Jon Agee won in the short category […]
March 14, 2013
On the hip website Flavorwire, Emily Temple offered a collection of photographs picturing 20 wonderful murals and frescoes from around the world that celebrate books and literature. This is one of my favorites–it’s the parking garage at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon. Enjoy all of the bookish buildings here. Barbara L.
March 13, 2013
Celebrations are in the works to help commemorate Philip Roth’s 80th birthday next week (March 19). For those of us who can’t get to Newark for the $35 bus tour traveling to places recalled in his books, or who weren’t invited to the literary party given by New York magazine, we can look forward to […]
March 12, 2013
A couple had planned on getting married at a local courthouse which was closed due to bad weather, so they shifted the locale to their favorite bookstore. Since Mark Hutson had proposed to Melanie Frances at the Annapolis Bookstore, they thought that was the next best place for their wedding. After checking ahead with the […]
March 10, 2013
Boston College English professor Amy Boesky has a fascinating essay in The Kenyon Review about her time as a ghostwriter for the popular Sweet Valley High series. For six years while she was a Harvard graduate student, Ms. Boesky – under the pseudonym “Kate William” – turned the free-verse “story plots” Francine Pascal created into “chapter outlines” that […]
February 27, 2013
Acclaimed American pianist Van Cliburn died this morning in Fort Worth, Texas at the age of 78. Mr Cliburn skyrocketed to fame after winning the first Tchaikovsky International Competition in 1958 when he was only 23 years old. Given a ticker-tape parade in Manhattan, Van Cliburn’s award held in Moscow “was viewed as an American […]
February 27, 2013
In London the 35th Diagram Prize is going to be awarded soon to the oddest book title of the year. Will it be Lofts of North America: Pigeon Lofts; How to Sharpen Pencils; Goblinproofing One’s Chicken Coop; or (my favorite) How Tea Cosies Changed the World? These four gems (all real books!) are on a […]
