When the U.K. newspaper the Sunday Times outed J.K. Rowling as the author of detective novel The Cuckoo's Calling earlier this year, computer scientists were among the first people called in. Although the novel was published under the pen name Robert Galbraith, two computational scholars––including Duquesne University's Patrick Juola––were tasked with confirming or denying whether the novel belonged to the Harry Potter author, or one of three other possible writers. That Juola succeeded (his conclusions were later confirmed by Rowling herself) speaks volume about the the potential that algorithms and computer science can have, even with application to a field as notoriously subjective as literature. Which raises an interesting question: Can we use software to help us think about literature? Reverse Engineering J.K. Rowling To explore that question, we should first look at how the Juola cracked Rowling's writing style. To begin the process, Juola loaded 1,000–word samples of The Cuckoo's Calling in to his self–designed Java Graphical Authorship Attribution Program (JGAAP), along with several other texts, including The Casual Vacancy, Rowling's first post–Harry Potter novel. A freely available Java–based, modular program for textual analysis, categorization, and authorship attribution, JGAAP analyzed the texts on four different variables: word–length distribution, the use of common words like "the" and "of," recurring–word pairings, and the distribution of "character... Continue reading at 'Fast Company'
[ Fast Company | 2013-09-03 00:00:00 UTC ]
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What is the International Literature Showcase?The International Literature Showcase is a partnership between the National Centre for Writing and British Council. It aims to showcase amazing writers based in the UK to programmers, publishers and teachers of literature in English around the world.... Continue reading at British Council global
[ British Council global | 2021-06-03 11:39:08 UTC ]
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The Bradford Literature Festival will return from 25th June to 4th July with a mix of live and free online events including appearances from Caitlin Moran, A A Dhand, Jacqueline Wilson and Michael Rosen. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-05-17 06:32:50 UTC ]
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It turns out 12th-century British scholars (monks, really, we’re mainly talking monks, here) had absolutely no problem borrowing “long passages” from whatever manuscripts they could get their hands on, and would freely plagiarize the writings of continental scholars. Of course, plagiarism then... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2021-05-11 14:10:25 UTC ]
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Simon Heffer’s encyclopedic book about Victorian and Edwardian England offers a fascinating perspective on the present. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2021-05-05 06:00:00 UTC ]
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The Royal Society of Literature (RSL) has announced the winners of its Literature Matters Awards, providing financial support for new projects. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-04-29 11:11:30 UTC ]
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A memoir of life in Silicon Valley, a capitalist satire, a novel that envisions a better future, and more: Your weekly guide to the best in books Continue reading at The Atlantic
[ The Atlantic | 2021-04-23 14:30:00 UTC ]
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Culture Street mural for Grenfell Tower, with poem by Ben Okri, North Kensington, London, image courtesy of IranWire and #PaintTheChange. London-based writer Malu Halasa canvasses the Middle Eastern and North African culture scene in London,... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2021-04-19 19:22:28 UTC ]
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The ProQuest-NYU Libraries project is available to thousands of international students and scholars during its pilot until August 31. The post International Students, Scholars Have Access to NYU’s Pilot With ProQuest appeared first on Publishing Perspectives. Continue reading at Publishing Perspectives
[ Publishing Perspectives | 2021-04-07 04:12:31 UTC ]
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Last year, when New York City was the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak in America, Bradley Tusk and Howard Wolfson decided to create a new annual award, the Gotham Book Prize, as part of an effort to “honor New York City and support the novelists who best captured the spirit of our city,” as... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2021-04-06 13:00:34 UTC ]
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Can you think of a single feel-good news story from the past five years that isn’t, at its core, an indictment of the society in which we live? Here at Lit Hub, one of our most-read stories last year was “Big-hearted strangers turn Little Free Libraries into Little Free Pantries.” While I don’t... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2021-02-23 16:10:35 UTC ]
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At the turn of the 20th century, with few children's books featuring Black characters, one young editor implored his peers to 'Let us make the world know that we are living.' Continue reading at The Conversation
[ The Conversation | 2021-02-05 13:08:13 UTC ]
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Call for inquiry into academic publishers as locked-down students unable to access study material onlineCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageLibrarians at UK universities say students’ reading lists for this term are being torn up because of publishers’ “eye-watering”... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2021-01-29 12:00:00 UTC ]
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In 1972, Tom Wolfe famously described a handful of writerly techniques that were catching on among his peers, in what was then called the New Journalism movement. The goal was to write nonfiction as immersive and transporting as the best novels, by focusing on richly descriptive scenes, verbatim... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2021-01-29 09:49:33 UTC ]
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The new African chapter of the Sustainable Development Goals' SDG Book Club will curate books in Kiswahili, Arabic, French, and English. The post New Initiative Brings African Literature Into the IPA-UN SDG Book Club appeared first on Publishing Perspectives. Continue reading at Publishing Perspectives
[ Publishing Perspectives | 2021-01-25 15:56:16 UTC ]
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In this ambitious anthology, short stories sit at various intersections of smolder and technical accomplishment. Continue reading at New Yorker
[ New Yorker | 2021-01-23 11:00:00 UTC ]
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In 2016, while touring in support of my debut novel, Only Love Can Break Your Heart, I appeared on a panel at the Mississippi Book Festival in Jackson. Despite (or perhaps because of) its troubled history, Mississippi is the Ground Zero of Southern literature, chiefly because of the towering... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2021-01-22 09:49:24 UTC ]
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In this week’s episode of Fiction/Non/Fiction, co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan are joined by author Jenny Offill and literary and film critic James Plath. First Offill shares her reaction to the insurrection and attempted coup at the Capitol last week, and discusses her latest... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2021-01-14 09:49:01 UTC ]
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“W-3,” Bette Howland’s account of her institutionalization, in 1968, proceeds according to a simple binary: those who suffer are patients; those who don’t are not. Continue reading at New Yorker
[ New Yorker | 2021-01-05 20:23:25 UTC ]
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IN THE 21ST CENTURY, digital literary culture originating from the African continent has exploded. I still remember the early years, when Kindles first came into our lives and everyone was weighing in on whether ebooks were going to mean the death of literature. Back then, everything was fresh... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2021-01-04 18:00:58 UTC ]
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