Essay Photo by Miko Guziuk / Unsplash In his newest book, What Is American Literature? (Oxford University Press, 2022), award-winning cultural commentator, translator, and editor Ilan Stavans, the publisher of Restless Books and the Lewis-Sebring Professor of Humanities and Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College, rereads an assortment of American literary classics through the prism of the Trump years, from the poems of Phillis Wheatley to Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are. In the primer, written during the presidential election won by Joe Biden—and before the January 6, 2021, sedition instigated by Donald Trump—he also reflects on the role public libraries play in disseminating the nation’s literature, the art of teaching it to new generations of students, and the future of the book as an artifact disseminating knowledge in our graphic-driven age. The volume closes with an epistolary account, in Stavans’s words, of “the Second American Civil War.” What follows is the section on teaching. American literature starts and ends in the classroom. It starts there because whoever is a writer-to-be is likely to discover the magic of literature as an assignment, or else in response to the tedium that comes from feeling disengaged with the educational purpose. And it ends in the classroom because, at a time of precipitous declines in reading habits, books have their largest audiences among students enrolled in... Continue reading at 'World Literature Today'
[ World Literature Today | 2022-02-02 19:59:22 UTC ]
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The civil rights leader offers a blueprint for tackling current issues, Keisha Blain writes. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2021-11-19 13:00:00 UTC ]
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Charlie Jane Anders discusses the coming-of-age stories that shaped her award-winning science fiction and helped her confront the world in front of her. The post The Coming-of-Age Stories That Made Charlie Jane Anders appeared first on The Millions. Continue reading at The Millions
[ The Millions | 2021-11-18 21:30:07 UTC ]
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Bestselling novelist Wilbur Smith has died unexpectedly at his Cape Town home, aged 88. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-11-14 09:10:11 UTC ]
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The ’80s and ’90s were great time to be a manga fan. For your retro-reading pleasure, here are the best story arcs from manga’s golden age, including the Martial Arts Figure Skating Arc from Ranma 1/2 by Rumiko Takahashi. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2021-10-25 10:33:00 UTC ]
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HarperCollins imprint Farshore has announced the winners of its annual Reading for Pleasure Teaching Awards. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-10-21 20:31:36 UTC ]
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This tale of Gilded Age New York City became, in 1921, the first novel by a woman to win the Pulitzer Prize. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2021-10-21 14:55:14 UTC ]
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Beloved children's author Gary Paulsen died October 13. Here's a look at his life and legacy through literature. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2021-10-14 11:22:48 UTC ]
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Tributes have been paid to Gary Paulsen, after the Hatchet author passed away at the age of 82. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-10-13 23:05:09 UTC ]
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Holocaust survivor, peace campaigner and Pan Macmillan author Eddie Jaku has died, aged 101. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-10-13 10:24:44 UTC ]
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Tributes have been paid to author Paul Reizin, who has passed away at the age of 67. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-10-05 06:01:52 UTC ]
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With clone emperors in haute couture and exotic wolf-lizards poised to attack, Foundation and For All Mankind herald a new era of ravishing spectaculars. Can they do for sci-fi what Game of Thrones did for fantasy?Dynastic infighting, the decline and fall of a mighty empire, tyrannical rulers... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2021-09-23 15:57:15 UTC ]
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Alastair Chisholm’s latest book opens a young fiction series set in a magical world with dragons aplenty Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-09-17 19:49:48 UTC ]
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The flash fiction literary community is like an extended family. If you are a writer and reader of flash, it is in all likelihood that your inner circle of literary peeps are other flash fiction folks or, you at least, know of one another. Six degrees is more like one or two in this community.... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2021-09-17 11:00:00 UTC ]
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Tributes have been paid to academic publisher Michael Holdsworth after his death, aged 73. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-09-15 13:03:36 UTC ]
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Peter Warner, former president and publisher of Thames & Hudson, has died at the age of 79 from complications of myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS). Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-09-12 20:14:10 UTC ]
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“Beautiful World, Where Are You” more than lives up to the promise of its predecessors and even exceeds the hype. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2021-09-10 12:00:00 UTC ]
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The prize-winning Scottish children’s author Cathy MacPhail has died at the age of 75 following a long illness. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-08-31 17:49:46 UTC ]
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Penguin Random House US has paid tribute to 36-year-old vice-president Erika Seyfried, who died over the weekend. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-08-30 18:31:43 UTC ]
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Children’s author and illustrator Jill Murphy, best known for the Worst Witch novels and Large Family picture books, has died aged 72. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-08-20 03:26:07 UTC ]
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The founder and owner of Emerald Publishing, Dr Keith Howard, has died peacefully at his home at the age of 89. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-08-14 08:04:56 UTC ]
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