This postcard illustration shows the Ohio State Penitentiary before the 1930 fire that “forever tormented” Himes.
I have reservations about the value of writers’ biographies in appreciating their wr…
In Every Issue
Naomi Shihab Nye Sitti’s Secrets Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers I remember coming across this beautifully written (and illustrated) children’s book when I was…
illustration: jen rickard blair Even we will admit you can’t read all the time. You can, however, stay connected to literature while cooking, gardening, and exercising by listening to a well-produced…
photo: sweet ice cream photography/unsplash Who is Aleksandur Kristiansen? The question was simple on the face of it. My co-translator had sent me a biopic note explaining that he was a Faroese poet…
photo: itamar grinberg/israeli ministry of tourism Safed (תפצ), one of the northernmost cities in Israel, is also one of the most artistic. The city has a poetic history only amplified by modern it…
Scene from "Wrestling Jerusalem" Photo: Teddy Wolff Exiting out of Union Station—a slightly less historic but nevertheless still important landmark in Washington, DC—one comes to the landing of a sh…
Compass Mathias Énard Trans. Charlotte Mandell New Directions, 2017 At the very time one should be looking ahead to the excellent works in transl…
Nellie Bly One of the most implausible failures of realism that mystery readers generally accept is one posed by the series detectives, particularly the amateur sleuths in traditional mysteries. In n…
One of my favorite book events ever was a celebration of gothic literature in Stoke Newington, London: it was held in a candlelit old church, and we read from Frankenstein before discussing…
Since returning from my time studying abroad, my answer to the question, “So where did you go again?” almost always draws a knit brow. Despite the fact that the initial reaction to its name is the…
I was struck by one of the poems Liu Xia released a few days before her husband, Liu Xiaobo, died of cancer as a political prisoner in China. One line in particular hovered in my dreams until one morn…
Photos courtesy of Ler Devagar Lisbon is a city with no shortage of literary monuments. Look at downtown Chiado, where Livraria Bertrand continues its 285-year-old bookselling business uninterrupted,…
In Other Words Jhumpa LahiriTrans. Ann GoldsteinKnopf, 2016 Jhumpa Lahiri’s In Other Words is a vulnerable journey of self-exploration by means of linguistic exile. It’s notably her…
Photo: Katherine Dewey Hill On a sultry and tinto-infused afternoon in Spain some years ago, a group of mystery writers from several nations were gossiping about editors and agents, contract…
Photo: Claire Huteau (2017) Meïkhâneh La Silencieuse Buda Music La Silencieuse is the second album by Meïkhâneh, a musically expansive trio from Rennes, France, that brin…
I bought Nadifa Mohamed’s Black Mamba Boy on a visit to her Somaliland hometown, Hargeisa. When I visited, Hargeisa was a dreary city—at least that was my first impression—until I got to kno…
One of the reasons I love living in Cairo is the fact that everyone spins yarns: the porter, the maid, the taxi driver. No one has the corner on stories—many of these stories rely on rumor, humor, an…
In midtown Oklahoma City, independent businesses are thriving off of the community’s desire for a new approach to urban living. Emerging from that environment, Commonplace Books sits in a brick build…
Browse: The World in Bookshops Ed. Henry Hitchings Pushkin Press, 2016 Don’t mistake Browse for a collection of breezy tributes to writers’ favorite bookshops. The essays in this lit…
The impact of British literature on India was profound, altering the poetry, fiction, and drama of the many cultures and languages unified by the empire, and it has lingered. Victorian attitudes in p…
Photo: Andrew Cagle Hello Psychaleppo Toyour Hello Psychaleppo’s third release, Toyour, draws inspiration from a wide variety of sources, some musical, some literary, and all celeb…
Photo: Kelly Deluded “I like simple writing, straightforward and uncomplicated, and I try to write like that,” Eli Eliahu said, upon receiving Israel’s Matanel Prize in 2013. His work is characterize…
This is not the Africa you knew. These books, some rooted in Africa but mostly embedded in multiple lands, explore issues of race, equality, immigration, cultural shifts, and more. At their core, they…
Thomas Hardy’s home, Max Gate, sits at the east end of Dorchester. Photo: Michael Day There are few British authors for whom place played a more important role in their work than Thomas Hardy. By all…
Photo courtesy of the American Writers Museum The new American Writers Museum, opening this May in Chicago, celebrates American literature in a lively, interactive space that honors America’s writers…