From Friends to The Thick Of It, the TV sitcom has evolved – but it’s no longer in rude health. Enter offbeat shows like Stath Lets Flats, bringing joy and potential redemptionThe sitcom has a long history of being dead. According to the former NBC president of entertainment, Warren Littlefield, in the early 1980s many people believed the sitcom was over. In 1999, Entertainment Weekly noted the genre’s demise. In 2005, so did Victoria Wood. The following year, the former ITV director of programmes, David Liddiment, made a programme called Who Killed the Sitcom? In the decade and a half since, similar questions have been posed repeatedly by publications on both sides of the Atlantic. Declaring the sitcom dead now seems more like an annual ritual than a convincing take on the state of comedy. But what if this time it’s actually true?There are a few reasons why the sitcom seems, if not comprehensively deceased, then at least less responsive than it has ever been. In terms of the comedy zeitgeist, the sadcom – a frequently bleak drama hybrid – continues to rule (see: I May Destroy You, Feel Good, This Way Up, Insecure). Streaming giants increasingly shape our viewing habits, and they don’t tend to make sitcoms (their discrete episodic plots mean they are not very bingeworthy, for a start). The newly established National Comedy Awards, meanwhile, doesn’t include a sitcom category, while Bafta dropped its sitcom award in 2015 and replaced it with one for scripted comedy: this... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2021-10-26 14:35:04 UTC ]
Like moons, Ancient Greece and adolescence, spring has given writers inspiration for centuries. “To what purpose, April, do you return again?” asks Edna St Vincent Millay, noting the “redness / of little leaves” and “the spikes of the crocus”. To Shakespeare, this time of year puts “the spirit... Continue reading at British Council global
[ British Council global | 2020-05-01 14:56:50 UTC ]
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Many lives are radically different right now. But birthdays, anniversaries, and public holidays come and go as before. The pink supermoon would have appeared whether we’d watched it from our windows or outdoors among a crowd of strangers. This week, Earth Day, Shakespeare’s birthday, and World... Continue reading at British Council global
[ British Council global | 2020-04-24 14:34:13 UTC ]
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A group of crime writers are publishing a digital short story anthology to help raise funds for charity Samaritans in the light of the coronavirus crisis. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-04-20 05:15:57 UTC ]
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The anthology “Burn It Down!,” edited by Breanne Fahs, collects manifestos from a range of perspectives and voices. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2020-04-15 09:00:01 UTC ]
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News and Events WLT The Neustadt International Prize for Literature, one of the most prestigious global literary awards, has entered its 50-year anniversary at the University of Oklahoma. Often referred to as “the American Nobel,” the biennial award... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2020-04-14 14:03:16 UTC ]
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Frances Hodgson Burnett is best known for children’s classics like The Secret Garden and Little Lord Fauntleroy, but a new anthology of lost stories reveals her “weird” side. At the Guardian, Alison Flood writes about “The Christmas in the Fog,” an eerie story set on a New York-bound liner. “Ten... Continue reading at The Millions
[ The Millions | 2020-04-13 20:30:07 UTC ]
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Why BODY TALK is more relevant than ever: a look a the cover and description of BODY TALK, the third anthology edited by Kelly Jensen. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2020-04-06 10:33:57 UTC ]
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ANNE PERRY’S ANTHOLOGY Odd Partners, a showcase sponsored by the Mystery Writers of America, is an entertaining and compelling hodgepodge. If the reader anticipates a particular kind of mystery story, the book will challenge expectations. The selections are remarkably diverse, featuring... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2020-04-01 17:00:04 UTC ]
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I often talk about how I created A Phoenix First Must Burn, my anthology of fantasy stories by black women authors, for my younger self, a girl who loved fantasy and science fiction and so desperately wanted to see herself in those worlds. It’s a strange experience to create the thing you wanted... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2020-03-25 11:00:00 UTC ]
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Interviews Tiffany Hawk In 2012, at sixteen years old, Joshua Wong and the pro-democracy student group he founded took on the Hong Kong government, mobilized more than one hundred thousand student protesters, and surprised the world by successfully... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2020-03-23 16:00:04 UTC ]
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BOTH JACK MILES’S Religion as We Know It: An Origin Story and Karen Armstrong’s The Lost Art of Scripture are contributions — powerful in their own ways — to the comparative study of religion. Miles was general editor to the Norton Anthology of World Religions, and his new book — more of a... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2020-03-16 12:30:52 UTC ]
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My mother, Lilian Mohin, who has died aged 81, was a co-founder in the 1970s of the London-based feminist publishing house Onlywomen Press, for which she wrote and edited works of literature and poetry. Lilian set up Onlywomen Press in 1974 with Sheila Shulman and Deborah Hart – and was a... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2020-03-13 16:34:45 UTC ]
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Boy do we need it. Lady Gaga and her organization, the Born This Way Foundation, have announced that they’ll be publishing an anthology later this year called Channel Kindness: Stories of Kindness and Community. All of the anthology’s authors are contributors to the Born This Way Channel... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-03-12 19:33:17 UTC ]
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I’d often start one project, only to realize that a more urgent one needed my attention. So I asked organizational experts to help give my to-do list strategy a makeover. As a solopreneur juggling multiple projects, clients, and income streams—copywriting, journalism, anthology editing, and... Continue reading at Fast Company
[ Fast Company | 2020-02-28 09:00:24 UTC ]
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In this episode of Reading Women, Kendra talks with Nicole Chung about the anthology she co-edited, A Map Is Only One Story out now from Catapult. From the episode: Kendra: Today, I’m talking to Nicole Chung, the editor in chief of Catapult Magazine and also one of the co-editors of the... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-02-26 09:47:43 UTC ]
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'Banned Book Club' by Kim Hyun Sook, Ko Hyung-Ju, and Ryan Estrada is the true story of Hyun Sook’s years as a South Korean college student under the brutal military regime of the early 1980s. In this 11-page excerpt a naive and apolitical Hyun Sook meets the fearless student members of a book... Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2020-02-19 05:00:00 UTC ]
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Cultural Cross Sections Alice-Catherine Carls Pachamama / Pichincha / Photo by Scipio Rocío Durán-Barba / Photo by Stephen Carls Rocío Durán-Barba is one of the most important voices of Latin American literature today. The author of more than fifty... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2020-02-13 15:00:14 UTC ]
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Book Reviews Dustin Pickering The introductory notes to Quesadilla and Other Adventures (Hawakal Publishers, 2019), edited by Somrita Urni Ganguly, lay the ground plan for the anthology. “Food is history,” writes Ganguly. “Food is memory. Food is... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2020-02-11 13:46:44 UTC ]
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What if we believed women? That’s the question at the heart of the new anthology Believe Me, edited by Jaclyn Friedman and Jessica Valenti which gathers together more than two-dozen leading voices on gender, power, and the most pressing issues shaping feminism today. Among them are Dahlia... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-02-04 09:49:39 UTC ]
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Now on its fifth series, the magic of Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton’s comedy anthology remains its ability to turn even the most banal of scenarios into disturbingly thrilling TVThe fifth series of Inside No 9 opens with an episode set entirely in a referees’ changing room. Four... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2020-02-03 13:56:16 UTC ]
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