What We're Reading – October 2019

Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine EvaristoSince studying Lara as a student, I have been a fan of Bernardine Evaristo’s work, and am delighted to see her win the Booker Prize this year. Girl, Woman, Other follows the lives of twelve black characters with different backgrounds and experiences, most of whom identify as female, living in London. I’ve enjoyed getting to know them through my reading and seeing how their lives are linked or overlap in different ways. What I found particularly interesting about this book is how each character responds in their own way to the universal questions of self and identity, particularly the tensions between personal, public and political gender discourse and the effect it has on the relationships the characters have with others. This feels like a very important book, and a must-read if you’re interested in what’s happening in UK fiction today.Rachel Stevens, Director LiteratureCommon People - An Anthology of Working-class Writers (ed Kit de Waal). An exceptional collection of essays, poems, memoir and short stories celebrating working-class life, culture and literature. There are many highlights, but I especially recommend Lisa McInnery’s essay ‘Working Class: An Escape Manual’, which considers how working-class writers and artists are co-opted into other identities when they achieve success. Debut author Adam Sharp’s ‘Play’, a memoir of his relationship with a substance-addicted father, is poignant and deftly handled - he’s a writer to... Continue reading at 'British Council global'

[ British Council global | 2019-10-30 09:49:28 UTC ]

Other news stories related to: "What We're Reading – October 2019"


Cover Reveal: See the cover for Greg Wrenn’s memoir Mothership.

Literary Hub is pleased to reveal the cover for former Stegner Fellow and Jones Lecturer at Stanford University, Greg Wrenn’s memoir, Mothership: A Memoir of Wonder and Crisis forthcoming from Regalo Press. Here’s a bit about the book from the publisher: Mothership: A Memoir of Wonder and Crisis... Continue reading at Literrary Hub

[ Literrary Hub | 2023-08-30 14:30:33 UTC ]
More news stories like this


Clara Luper’s Diamonds and Acts of Radical Love: A Conversation with Cornel West, by Karlos K. Hill

Clara Luper’s Diamonds and Acts of Radical Love: A Conversation with Cornel West, by Karlos K. Hill Interviews robvollmar@ou.edu Wed, 08/30/2023 - 08:14 Dr. Cornel West / Courtesy of AAE SpeakersCornel West, who recently retired from Princeton... Continue reading at World Literature Today

[ World Literature Today | 2023-08-30 13:14:20 UTC ]
More news stories like this


Can Short Stories Boost Financial Literacy?

The Principal Foundation and the Center for Fiction are teaming up with French independent publisher Short Édition on a short story contest meant to entice readers to consider the almighty dollar through “the universal art form of storytelling.” Continue reading at Publishers Weekly

[ Publishers Weekly | 2023-08-29 04:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this


Transition and renewal: The 10 best books of August

Our book picks this month touch on themes of change and renewal. They include a memoir about embracing a truer identity, a report on one Ohio town’s struggle toward racial equity, and a novel about pursuing the American dream. Continue reading at The Christian Science Monitor

[ The Christian Science Monitor | 2023-08-28 15:22:29 UTC ]
More news stories like this


Why Safiya Sinclair cut her dreadlocks and wrote a memoir of pain and poetry

Safiya Sinclair was raised to be Rastafari; instead, she became a poet. Why it took her more than a decade to write the lyrical memoir 'How to Say Babylon' Continue reading at Los Angeles Times

[ Los Angeles Times | 2023-08-28 15:00:14 UTC ]
More news stories like this


Is ‘War Games’ Homeworld 3’s secret weapon?

If one thing kept me coming back (and back) to Homeworld, it was skirmish mode. Setting up a quick (“quick”) battle against the CPU would often rob me of a whole weekend while at college. Homeworld 3 sees a new mode arrive on the second sequel, a roguelike-inspired multiplayer co-op called War... Continue reading at Engadget

[ Engadget | 2023-08-25 15:30:05 UTC ]
More news stories like this


Han Dong Publishes New Anthology of Poems

Phoenix Publishing and Media Group offers a bilingual selection of the avant-garde poet’s works spanning the past 40 years. (Sponsored) Continue reading at Publishers Weekly

[ Publishers Weekly | 2023-08-25 04:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this


Former 'Friends' writer says the stars were unhappy and purposely tanked jokes they didn't like

A former "Friends" writer's new memoir details her experience on the show at a time when the stars seemed unhappy, and the writers room wasn't so friendly. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times

[ Los Angeles Times | 2023-08-25 01:20:03 UTC ]
More news stories like this


‘A tired old show’: Friends writer claims cast deliberately ruined jokes

Patty Lin says that Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Matthew Perry and co forced rewrites of gags they didn’t like by performing them badlyFriends may have been a worldwide smash hit that made megastars of its cast, but – according to one of its writers – the actors weren’t always trying their... Continue reading at The Guardian

[ The Guardian | 2023-08-24 10:34:01 UTC ]
More news stories like this


Lit Hub Daily: August 23, 2023

“No one needs my opinion about books.” Longtime indie bookseller Josh Cook against the cultural authoritarianism of “good taste.” | Lit Hub Criticism When folk went mainstream: On Harry Everett Smith and the cultural paradigm shift that his Anthology of American Folk Music. | Lit Hub Music... Continue reading at Literrary Hub

[ Literrary Hub | 2023-08-23 10:30:23 UTC ]
More news stories like this


Making ‘Necessary Trouble’: A historian rises above her roots

Drew Gilpin Faust, former Harvard University president, discusses her memoir “Necessary Trouble,” about her rebellion against sexist and racist strictures of 1950s Virginia. Continue reading at The Christian Science Monitor

[ The Christian Science Monitor | 2023-08-22 16:11:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this


A Summary and Analysis of Katherine Mansfield’s ‘The Fly’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘The Fly’ is not one of the best-known short stories of the New Zealand-born writer Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923), but it is significant for being one of her few stories which deals directly with the First World War. In the story, a man is reminded […] Continue reading at Interesting Literature

[ Interesting Literature | 2023-08-21 14:00:52 UTC ]
More news stories like this


Amor Towles Sees Dead People

The novelist discusses his career and his recent essay about cadavers in crime fiction, and the actor Richard E. Grant talks about his memoir and his love of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.” Continue reading at The New York Times

[ The New York Times | 2023-08-18 17:55:09 UTC ]
More news stories like this


Lessons and Carols for Recovery and Redemption

John West’s Lessons and Carols is a lyric memoir of recovery, parenting, loss, and hope, which is also periodically quite funny (ex. the first line of the first Lesson, “Caring for this baby has taught me new ways to resent.”) Hopscotching through time, the memoir shows us West’s first, early... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2023-08-18 11:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this


Crafting Madness: Stephanie Heit on Joining a Lineage of Authors with Mental Health Difference

Stephanie Heit’s new book, Psych Murders, is a hybrid memoir poem that documents her experience of shock treatment. She traces her queer mad bodymind through breathlessness, damage, refusal, and memory loss as it shifts in and out of locked psychiatric wards and extreme bipolar states. Stephanie... Continue reading at Literrary Hub

[ Literrary Hub | 2023-08-18 09:25:04 UTC ]
More news stories like this


Six books to read this Women In Translation month – recommended by our experts

Mysteries from China, short stories from the Balkans, a French-Morrocan autobiography and more. Continue reading at The Conversation

[ The Conversation | 2023-08-17 13:31:43 UTC ]
More news stories like this


Pidgeon Pagonis on the Urgency of Writing a Memoir as an Intersex Writer

Pidgeon and I met in the summer of 2020, the summer of sickness, and violent change. We spoke over Zoom, nearly 800 miles apart—I had been hired as a developmental editor for an intersex activist named Pidgeon Pagonis. A developmental editor is a bit of a catch-all title: we do a bit of... Continue reading at Literrary Hub

[ Literrary Hub | 2023-08-17 09:20:26 UTC ]
More news stories like this


How to watch Christian Cooper discuss 'Better Living Through Birding' at L.A. Times Book Club

'Extraordinary Birder' host Christian Cooper brings his memoir 'Better Living Through Birding: Notes From a Black Man in the Natural World' to the L.A. Times Book Club. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times

[ Los Angeles Times | 2023-08-16 20:59:16 UTC ]
More news stories like this


The Memoir That Found Me: Michaele Weissman on Food, Marriage, and Identity

My husband, a professor of electrical engineering by trade, is the kind of obsessive for which I have an affinity in my writing life. A refugee born in Latvia, John loves Latvian rye bread fervently. He eats Latvian rye several times a day and is unable to leave home without a five-pound loaf... Continue reading at Literrary Hub

[ Literrary Hub | 2023-08-16 09:50:36 UTC ]
More news stories like this


Exclusive: See the cover for Wei Tchou’s experimental memoir Little Seed.

Literary Hub is pleased to reveal the cover for Wei Tchou’s Little Seed, “an experimental memoir that braids together the narrative of the author’s relationship with her brother and family with a deeply personal field guide to ferns,” which will be published by Deep Vellum/A Strange Object in... Continue reading at Literrary Hub

[ Literrary Hub | 2023-08-15 14:00:01 UTC ]
More news stories like this