Seriously Questioning… Stephen Burt
Stephen Burt is a poet, critic, and professor of English at Harvard. In 2009, his guide to reading contemporary poetry, Close Calls With Nonsense, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle...
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Seriously Questioning… Jessica Strand
Jessica Strand is the host of New York Public Library’s fantastic Books at Noon series and used to coordinate Strand Book Store’s public events too, though the shared name is...
read moreSeriously Questioning… Ayana Mathis
In Ayana Mathis’s first novel, The Twelve Tribes of Hattie (Knopf Doubleday, 2012), a young woman moves to Philadelphia after her father is murdered in Jim Crow-era Georgia. There, she has...
read moreOn Face Value
The Face: Cartography of the Void Chris Abani Restless Books, 2016; 96pp What do our faces say about us — and how much of what they say is fair? That’s one of the questions posed by...
read moreJon Ronson: In Search of the Genuinely New
“I suppose, being tweedy and owl-like, I just don’t look like the sort of person who normally hangs around extreme porn shoots.” This is a sentence in Jon Ronson’s excellent book So You’ve...
read moreThe Jazz of Physics: Exclusive Excerpt
The Jazz of Physics: The Secret Link Between Music and the Structure of the Universe Stephon Alexander Basic Books, 2016; 272pp Early on in his mind-blowing new book, The Jazz of Physics, Stephon...
read moreRevolution Begins At Home
Fun Home Book and lyrics by Lisa Kron Music by Jeanine Tesori Based on Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic (2006) by Alison Bechdel Broadway’s on a roll right now, and it’s thanks in no small...
read moreAmerika the Beautiful
Days of Rage: America’s Radical Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence Bryan Burrough Penguin, 2015; 608pp “We will burn and loot and destroy. We are the...
read moreThe Eyes Have It: The Danish Girl as Book and Movie
The Danish Girl David Ebershoff Penguin, 2015 (originally published 2000); 304pp The Danish Girl Directed by Tom Hooper UK/US/Belgium, 2015; 119 minutes The eyes have it. In the recent, Academy...
read moreMargo Jefferson’s “Negroland: A Memoir”
Negroland: A Memoir Margo Jefferson Pantheon Books, 2015; 256pp If an authentic life is what you seek, you’re basically doomed to phoniness: this is the paradox that makes...
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