Books & Literature

AudioFile’s Aurelia Scott and host Jo Reed discuss this clever historical mystery with a fabulous twist. It’s centered around Charlotte Holmes, a young woman with a gift for “discernment” and getting into trouble, who has secrets worth protecting. Golden Voice Narrator Kate Reading is masterful in her portrayals. Reading’s aristocratic British voices are spot-on, and […]

April 17, 2025, 4:29pm Today, the New York Public Library announced their Young Lions Fiction Award finalists. The annual award, now in its 25th year, honors a writer under 35 for an exceptional novel or short story collection. Here are this year’s finalists: ‘Pemi Aguda for GhostrootsEliza Barry Callahan for The Hearing TestAlexander Sammartino for Last

If you’ve ever opened a children’s book and thought this should be my wallpaper, know you’re in good company. Article continues after advertisement Bruce Handy, the critic/journalist/humorist and multi-genre author, has been obsessed with inside covers for a while. So much so that this month, he puts on a new hat—curator. His exhibit on the

The Best of the Literary Internet, Every Day TODAY: In 2014, Gabriel Garcia Marquez dies.  Vinh Nguyen on memory, floating signifiers, and the challenge of capturing a country as multifarious as Vietnam in a memoir. | Lit Hub Criticism “This is the chief way in which my process seems to differ from other writers, and

Like many other Native American peoples, the Cherokees were masters of metaphor when it came to negotiation with European colonial authorities. Examples abound across generations, expressed in periods of crisis and less momentous occasions. For illustrative purposes, consider a speech made by chief Kanagatucko (Standing Turkey) in September 1761 when Cherokees moved toward peace with the

In his 1953 novel The Adventures of Augie March, Saul Bellow (himself born in Quebec) describes what Augie sees to the north while riding a freight train back to Chicago: Article continues after advertisement …my eyes followed the spin of the fields newly laid out for sowing, the oak woods with hard bronze survivor leaves,

In the early months of 1966, whenever Paul McCartney sat down at a piano, wherever it was, he would start tinkering with a song he called “Miss Daisy Hawkins.” From the moment he found its first five syllabic notes, the song seems to have found its themes: loneliness, futility, the end of life. McCartney was

In high school I acted in plays; in college I began to direct. Eventually my theatre resume also included acting teacher, stage manager, lighting designer, producer, dramaturg, literary manager, and founder of a traveling teen theatre company. Article continues after advertisement I was awarded a fellowship to study drama and directing at UC Berkeley. When

After several late nights scrolling through Instagram, I chance upon the perfect image for the cover of my memoir The Migrant Rain Falls in Reverse. Taken by a Vietnamese street photographer, the image is a long shot of an intersection; at the top, a truck is entering the frame while a car is exiting, and

Hey there, hello, howdy! Welcome back to another exciting edition of Am I the Literary Asshole?, the drunken literary advice column that isn’t mad at you, it’s just disappointed. I’m your host, Kristen Arnett, and I’m excited to say that we’ve got another round of incredible questions headed our way today! Y’all have really been