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The Making of Norman Mailer

The young man went to war and became a novelist. But did he ever really come back?
by David Denby via The New Yorker on December 19, 2022
Octavia E. Butler.

The Spectacular Life of Octavia E. Butler

The story of the girl who grew up in Pasadena, took the bus, loved her mom and grandmother, and wrote herself into the world.
by E. Alex Jung via Vulture on November 21, 2022
Rob McKuen infront of a background composed of spines of his books.

Fifty Years Ago, He Was America’s Most Famous Writer. Why Haven’t You Ever Heard of Him?

He sold 60 million books and 100 million records. Then he disappeared.
by Dan Kois via Slate on October 10, 2022
Edna St. Vincent Millay poses for a portrait among magnolia blossoms.

The Wondrous and Mundane Diaries of Edna St. Vincent Millay

Her private writing offers another, more idiosyncratic angle to understand the famed poet.
by Apoorva Tadepalli via The Nation on August 3, 2022
Charles Chesnutt portrait

The Atlantic Writers Project: Charles Chesnutt

A contemporary Atlantic writer reflects on one of the voices from the magazine's archives who helped shape the publication—and the nation.
by Imani Perry via The Atlantic on July 11, 2022
Invisible Man book cover with Ralph Ellison on the back

Broke and Blowing Deadlines

How Ralph Ellison got Invisible Man into the canon.
by Anne Trubek via Notes From A Small Press on June 29, 2022
Watercolor portrait of Bronson Alcott, a 19th century American philosopher and educator.

New England Ecstasies

The transcendentalists thought all human inspiration was divine, all nature a miracle.
by Brenda Wineapple via New York Review of Books on February 16, 2022
Zora Neale Hurston browsing books at a book fair, looking at a book called "American Stuff."

The Zora Neale Hurston We Don’t Talk About

In the new nonfiction collection “You Don’t Know Us Negroes,” what emerges is a writer who mastered a Black idiom but seldom championed race pride.
by Lauren Michele Jackson via The New Yorker on February 14, 2022
Handwritten magazine index

‘Index, A History of the’ Review: List-O-Mania

At the back of the book, the index provides a space for reference—and sometimes revenge.
by Ben Yagoda via The Wall Street Journal on February 11, 2022
Richard Wright.

Outcasts and Desperados

Reflections on Richard Wright’s recently published novel, "The Man Who Lived Underground."
by Adam Shatz via London Review of Books on October 4, 2021
QAnon proponent and Trump supporters

Bad Information

Conspiracy theories like QAnon are ultimately a social problem rather than a cognitive one. We should blame politics, not the faulty reasoning of individuals.
by Nicolas Guilhot via Boston Review on August 23, 2021
Abstract photo of Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe, Crank Scientist

The great discoveries of the age captivated Poe’s imagination. He almost always misunderstood them.
by Colin Dickey via The New Republic on July 21, 2021
Richard Jean So and the cover of his book "Redlining Culture"

The History of Publishing Is a History of Racial Inequality

A conversation with Richard Jean So about combining data and literary analysis to understand how the publishing industry came to be dominated by white writers. 
by Richard Jean So, Rosemarie Ho via The Nation on May 27, 2021
Photographs and a cover of Spectra, a literary magazine.
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Spectra: The Poetry Movement That Was All a Hoax

In the experimental world of modernist poetry, literary journals were vulnerable to fake submissions.
by Ashawnta Jackson via JSTOR Daily on April 6, 2021
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

The Poetics of Abolition

For poet Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, as for the Black Romantics, history is the repetition of anti-Black violence that has yet to be abolished.
by Manu Samriti Chander via Public Books on March 16, 2021
Gerd Stern.

Ping Pong of the Abyss

Gerd Stern, the Beats, and the psychiatric institution.
by Gabby Kiser via The Beat Museum on February 9, 2021
A collage of book covers.

The Radical Origins of Self-Help Literature

How did the genre of self-help go from one focused on collective empowerment to one serving the class hierarchy as it stands?
by Jennifer Wilson via The Nation on November 17, 2020
A movie still featuring a close-up of two actors from The Age of Innocence

The Age of Innocence: How a US Classic Defined Its Era

Cameron Laux looks at how The Age of Innocence – published 100 years ago – marked a pivotal moment in US history.
by Cameron Laux via BBC News on September 23, 2020
Portrait of John Brown beside the American flag, c.1846.
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America, Lost and Found at Wounded Knee

Stephen Vincent Benét’s lost epic “John Brown’s Body” envisions a nation sutured together after the Civil War, but fails to reckon with the war’s causes.
by Ed Simon, Frederick H. Jackson, Donald M. Foerster via JSTOR Daily on April 29, 2020

Bad Romance

The afterlife of Vivian Gornick's "The Romance of American Communism" shows that we bear the weight of dead generations—and sometimes living ones, too.
by Alyssa Battistoni via Dissent on April 13, 2020

The Tangled History of Illness and Idiocy

The pandemic is stress-testing two concepts Americans have historically gotten wrong.
by Jessi Jezewska Stevens via The Nation on April 13, 2020
A crowd with communist and unemployment relief signs listens to a woman making a speech.

What Endures of the Romance of American Communism

Many of the Communists who felt destined for a life of radicalism experienced their lives as irradiated by a kind of expressiveness that made them feel centered.
by Vivian Gornick via New York Review of Books on April 3, 2020
Sign noting that spitting spreads the Spanish flu.

Trapped on a Ship During a Pandemic

“Either they’ve got no conscience, or they’re not awake to the gravity of the situation.”
by Willa Cather via Lapham’s Quarterly on March 31, 2020

The Seminal Novel About the 1918 Flu Pandemic Was Written by a Texan

Katherine Anne Porter’s ‘Pale Horse, Pale Rider’ tells the tale of a pandemic she barely survived.
by Michael Agresta via Texas Monthly on March 25, 2020
Photo of Carson McCullers

The Closeting of Carson McCullers

Through her relationships with other women, one can trace the evidence of McCullers’s becoming, as a woman, as a lesbian, and as a writer.
by Jenn Shapland via The Paris Review on February 3, 2020
The Nancy Drew logo, a silhouette of a woman looking through a detective glass

Oh Nancy, Nancy!

The mysterious appeal of my first detective.
by Sam Leith via The Spectator on February 1, 2020

‘A Doubtful Freedom’

Andrew Delbanco's new book positions the debate over fugitive slaves as a central factor in the nation's slide toward disunion.
by David W. Blight via New York Review of Books on January 14, 2020

What Does Gender Have to Do with the Desert?

"Everything, of course."
by Sarah Swedberg via Nursing Clio on April 11, 2019
Soldiers burning books.

How We Roasted Donald Duck, Disney's Agent of Imperialism

Why a 47-year old anti-colonialist critique by Chilean dissidents may be newly relevant in the Trump era.
by Ariel Dorfman via The Guardian on October 5, 2018

Rereading Childhood Books Teaches Adults About Themselves

Whether they delight or disappoint, old books provide touchstones for tracking personal growth.
by Emma Court via The Atlantic on July 27, 2018
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