Eleanor Catton discussed her new novel, Birnam Wood, with The Cut.
The threat of environmental collapse poses quite a difficult challenge for a novelist in that the responsibility for it is so diffuse. It’s so random. In a sense, a novel has a funny relationship with randomness, because everything is in there because the author has chosen to put it there, and there can be unexpected elements or surprising elements, but there can’t be truly random elements. It’s only the illusion of randomness. In a way, I didn’t really set about writing a book that’s an “ecological thriller,” and to be perfectly honest, I still don’t really know what that is.
Stream a new song by Protomartyr.
eBooks on sale for $1.99 today:
Enough Rope by Dorothy Parker
Hurricane Girl by Marcy Dermansky
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Why Read the Classics? by Italo Calvino
eBooks on sale for $3.99 today:
Editors on Editing edited by Gerald Gross
New and Selected Poems, 1962–2012 by Charles Simic
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Conductor Rafael Payare discussed the use of Mahler’s fifth symphony in the film Tár with Deceptive Cadence.
Book Riot and Literary Hub recommended the week’s best new books.
Stream a new song by Angel Olsen.
Dan Kois talked to Electric Literature about his debut novel Vintage Contemporaries.
Wayne Shorter’s biographer Michelle Mercer remembered the jazz musician at NPR Music.
Wayne chose to communicate unconventionally and creatively because that style was most uniquely him, truest to his imagination. Most of us grow out of our imaginations, or at least compromise them with age. Wayne never did and, as a Buddhist, he treasured and nurtured a state of wonder in others as well, attempting to activate the imagination in everyone he met.
Benjamín Labatut was interviewed by Public Books.
My lack of roots has certainly affected my literature. Though I’m Chilean, and can’t deny it (well, I can, actually, and do so frequently, mostly to mess with my compatriots), I don’t feel identification with my country, or its literature, or nationality. But I don’t feel Dutch either. Argentine, even less so, though many people believe I am when they meet me for the first time, because I share their typical character flaws. I’d love to say (like Bolaño did) that I feel Latin American, but that too would be untrue.
Stream a new Beach Fossils song.
The Creative Independent interviewed author Kate Folk.
I find first drafts challenging and, actually, I prefer the revision stage, because it seems so daunting to create something out of nothing.
Paste profiled Shalom’s Shalom Obisie-Orlu.
Lesley Patterson, co-writer of All Quiet on the Western Front, talked storytelling with Shondaland.
“I read the novel in high school, and it’s so beautifully poetic. What struck me was the thematic essence of that betrayal of a youthful generation,” says Paterson, who first set out to acquire the rights to the project some 16 years ago.
Stream a new song by Rufus Wainwright and Brandi Carlile.
Bethany Ball shared an essay on working entry-level jobs in publishing at Electric Literature.
Vulture listed the year’s best songs so far.
WIRED interviewed Margaret Atwood.
Steam a new song by Indigo De Souza.
I’m a Writer, But… interviewed author Lydia Conklin.
Stream a new song by Asher Gamedze.
Idra Novey talked to Literary Hub about her novel Take What You Need.
I’m interested in blind spots, why people write each other off. It’s so easy to delete someone online, but what if that person devoted nine years of her life to raising you? I wanted to write about the psychic cost over time of that kind of estrangement for someone like Leah, who likes to think of herself as empathic, but is in fact quite limited in her ability to understand Jean’s reality, surrounded by vacant houses and the sound of gunshots at night.
Ani Difranco discussed writing a children’s book with SPIN.
The longlist for the 2023 Women’s Prize for fiction has been announced.
Stream a new song by the New Pornographers.
This Is Horror interviewed author Eric LaRocca.
Stream a new song by Alaska Reid.
JMWW interviewed author Terese Svoboda.
Snapped Ankles covered Blurt’s “Planet You.”
Full Stop interviewed author Pyae Moe Thet War.
Stream a new song by Brigid Mae Power.
Literary Hub shared an excerpt from Rafael Frumkin’s novel Confidence.
Stream a new song by the Saxophones.
Lakiesha Carr discussed her debut novel An Autobiography of Skin with Shondaland.
Stream a new song by Peter Gabriel.