Literary Hub shared an excerpt from Ava Chin’s memoir Mott Street.
Tiny Ruins’ Hollie Fullbrook discussed the inspirations behind the band’s new album, Ceremony, with BrooklynVegan.
eBook on sale for $1.99 today:
The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy
eBooks on sale for $2.99 today:
All I Ever Wanted by Kathy Valentine
Zabar’s by Lori Zabar
Cover Me recapped April’s best cover songs.
The New York Times and TIME recommended May’s best new books.
Stream a new song by Mt. Sims and The Knife’s Olof Dreijer.
Delia Cai discussed her debut novel Central Places with Electric Literature.
The novel is also an explanation for who I am to people in my life who I care about. An explanation to that hilariously loaded, stereotypical question of “Where are you from?” I wanted my friends to read it and think “Oh, this explains a lot about you.”
Paste listed April’s best albums.
Nyani Nkrumah talked to the Christian Science Monitor about her debut novel Wade in the Water.
…when I decided to look at the intersection of race and society and to what extent our past influences our future and who we are, and the roots of the legacy of racism and colorism … Mississippi seemed like the perfect backdrop.
Stream a new song by Neon Indian’s Alan Palomo and Mac DeMarco.
Firmer Great British Bakeoff contestant Kim-Joy discussed her graphic novel Turtle Bread with Eater.
There have been quite a few graphic novel cookbooks to come out in recent years, and it’s such a good way to bring you through a recipe and show you what you need to do without either a million photographs or trying to parse a really dense paragraph of writing.
There’s a beauty of it being illustrated. Because I’ve done a few cookbooks now, when the photographer comes and takes a picture, it’s so different from real life. You’ve got the perfect lighting and everything’s so controlled, but real life isn’t like that. And I feel like an illustration is something that more people can relate to, rather than the perfect photo.
Avalon Emerson talked to Pitchfork about her new dream pop project.
Pitchfork: Your new project feels like a pretty sharp left turn. Could you walk me through how it came about?
Avalon Emerson: I’ve never been the kind of person to listen to dance music in my free time. I always wanted to make something that could be played, unplugged-style, on an acoustic guitar or piano and still hold up. In high school, I made folky guitar music and then when I moved to San Francisco, I started making dance music and DJing. I ended up being pretty good at it, so that was the focus of my music career for the past decade. I don’t want to say that my desire to make pop music came out of any negative sense, like, “I don’t like dance music anymore.” I still love it, and I still get inspired by it. Admittedly, that happens less and less nowadays, but it’s still a part of me.
Sarah Cypher discussed her debut novel, The Skin and Its Girl, with Shondaland.
The female characters are really important in this novel. It’s also a queer novel, so a lot of the identities of the novel are formed against what culture expects of each particular character.
Stream a new song by Lightning Dust.
Debutiful recommended May’s best debut books.
PopMatters reconsidered Talking Heads’ Speaking in Tongues album on its 40th anniversary.
Literary Hub recommended May’s best new poetry collections.
Desire covered Metronomy’s “I Have Seen Enough.”
Electric Literature shared new fiction by Marian Crotty.
Healing Potpourri shared four cover songs at Aquarium Drunkard.
Rebecca Makkai talked to the New Yorker about her story in this week’s issue.
Kurtis Blow reflected on his song “The Breaks,” the first hip-hop song to go gold, at SPIN.