Andrea Levy Picador ($14) by Christopher J. Lee Small Island is the recipient of last year’s Orange Prize as well as the Whitbread Book of the Year Award, two of Great Britain’s highest literary honors—a first time occasion for a work of fiction. I mention this at the start insofar as these distinctions reflect the original […]
Neil Gaiman William Morrow ($26.95) by Kelly Everding Neil Gaiman is a human repository of stories. Or is he? Human, I mean. He seems to know an awful lot about gods throughout time and cultures. And he knows all their stories. But what sets Gaiman apart from any run-of-the-mill deity is his distinct understanding of […]
by Justin Taylor “The book died because that's what good books do without huge accidents of publicity.”-Padgett Powell YOUR COLLEGE TOWN WAS A BUBBLE In October 2004, I picked up the pre-election issue of The Believer. In that issue, in an article entitled “A Soldier Upon a Hard Campaign,” Chris Bachelder waxed philosophical on political and satiric […]
by Robert J. Nebel Academic life was not easy for Paul Orfalea. As a hyperactive, dyslexic child growing up in the 1950s and '60s, Orfalea's future looked dim. His education was plagued with one disappointment after another. He flunked two grades and graduated eighth from the bottom of his high school class. Through strength and […]
by Aryanil Mukherjee Chris Stroffolino with Continuous Peasant band mates Chris Stroffolino is the author of three full-length collections of poetry: Oops (Pavement Saw Press, 1994), Stealer's Wheel (Hard Press, 1999), and Speculative Primitive (Tougher Disguises, 2005) as well as several limited edition chapbooks. His outspoken views on poetry can be found in Spin Cycle, a collection of essays, talks, and reviews […]
by Joyelle McSweeney Born in Barbados in 1930, Kamau Brathwaite has contributed a lifetime of effort to the peoples, cultures, literatures, and languages of the Caribbean and the world at large. A poet, scholar, linguist, and cultural theorist, he took his bachelor’s degree with honors from Cambridge in 1953 and, after stints as a public […]
Kamau Brathwaite, Chris Stroffolino, Chris Bachelder, and more... FEATURES Poetics, Revelations, and Catastrophes: An Interview with Kamau Brathwaite Interviewed by Joyelle McSweeney Barbados's respected man of letters discusses spiritual and natural forces, history, poetry, ecology, and technology. Bipolar Worlds: An Interview with Chris Stroffolino Interviewed by Aryanil Mukherjee The poet, essayist, and singer/songwriter on the […]