In celebration of Banned Books Week, here are some articles about censorship. Banned Books Week Fights Censorship by People in Power “This op-ed argues that those who ban or burn books are seeking to destroy history, ideas, and narratives that challenge the authority of those in power.” Jameelah Nasheed provides a succinct history of censorship, …
“We think of the writer as being the person who writes the book and the book as an object, solid and unchanging. But the book is a mutable object. I can write a book and you can read it, and in doing that, we’ve engaged in a process of cocreation. The book that you read …
It’s that time of year: it’s ALA’s annual Banned Books Week. This year’s event is themed “Books Unite Us, Censorship Divides Us” and is set to run from September 26 through October 2. And it comes at a time, ALA officials said this week, when LGBTQIA+ books and books that focus on racism and racial …
Luckily, in our third news story about this, we have better news! After continuing protests by students and parents, national media coverage, and authors speaking out, the board has finally reversed the ban. Source: Central York School District (Finally) Overturns Ban On Antiracist Books Since I had carried the earlier news about this incident, …
Central York School District (Finally) Overturns Ban On Antiracist Books Read More »
“But reading is actually the opposite of escape. No story can live without the reader’s emotional participation. The writer’s words are but directions to a place within the reader where sadness and joy and grief and curiosity and boredom and hope and despair reside. The words alone are a skeleton; the reader’s felt responses to …
An Innocent Abroad: Joan Didion’s Midlife Crisis Novelist, short story writer, critic and retired English professor Scott Bradfield grew up in California but had difficulty “[l]earning how to write fictions set in California”: California is filled with so many vivid pleasures, smells, textures, and absurdities of human character that it feels difficult, or even impossible, …
This issue of our newsletter is devoted to the Library of Congress National Book Festival, which begins in less than an hour! It all kicks off at 11 a.m. with Michael J. Fox talking about his new memoir, “No Time Like the Future: An Optimist Considers Mortality,” and then U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo will …
Book Club: Clear your schedule — the National Book Festival starts NOW Read More »
Hey mystery lovers, check out all these great mentions of the Queen of Crime, Agatha Christie, in contemporary literature and pop culture! Source: Clue Attitude: Agatha Christie in Contemporary Literature and Pop Culture Oh dear, I missed Agatha Christie’s birthday, which was yesterday (September 15). So here, with my apologies for being late, is …
Clue Attitude: Agatha Christie in Contemporary Literature and Pop Culture Read More »
Each year the U.S. celebrates National Hispanic Heritage Month from September 15 to October 15. The holiday was started by President Lyndon Johnson as Hispanic Heritage Week in 1968 and was expanded to a month by President Ronald Reagan in 1988. The observation begins on September 15 because that date is the anniversary of independence …
“When I embark on a writing project, my characters come to tell me their backstory. Very little of it—perhaps none—might be referred to in the final draft, but it’s there nonetheless, hiding in the decisions that each character makes, driving their reaction to every event. They tell me, these characters, of past incidents, big and …
Quotation: “characters come to tell me their backstory” Read More »
