Have you ever wondered what it’s like to win Wimbledon, run The Washington Post, or get drunk with Jimmy Buffett? Through the best autobiographies and celebrity memoirs, we can access gripping true stories told in the words of the people who lived through them. Translating experience into language is a creative act. Autobiography can be … Read more
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Alabama lawmakers on Thursday advanced legislation that could see librarians prosecuted under the state’s obscenity law for providing “harmful” materials to minors, the latest in a wave of bills in Republican-led states targeting library content and decisions. The Alabama House of Representatives voted 72-28 for the bill that now moves to … Read more
There are competing theories about how to pick the best book club book. When I nobly started a book club in my early 20s, I had grand ambitions of filling in the holes in my undergrad education. I think we started with Confessions of Zeno. Years later, I joined what had been dubbed the “high-low … Read more
In May 2019, I flew to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to attend a conference on the future of carbon capture, the technology the oil industry was betting on to slash the climate impact of burning fossil fuels. Just six months after the release of a dire report giving humanity roughly a decade to halve emissions that … Read more
I always knew it was gonna be about a screenwriter and a novelist who had known each other in high school, and the archetypes of who they were in high school. I didn’t want to do any research because I was busy at the time, so it was just going to be about adaptation. But … Read more
Rebel Wilson has cancelled her Australian book tour amid delays in the publishing of her memoir Rebel Rising. The Australian leg of the 44-year-old star’s tour was due to kick off in Brisbane on May 12, followed by an appearance in Melbourne on May 14. WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE: Rebel Wilson and Sacha Baron Cohen … Read more
Aruba’s colonial history also meant documents were spread all over the place. “Our collection was scattered,” says Edric Croes, the head of archival conservation and management at the National Archives of Aruba. There were works to be scanned across the world, including in the Netherlands, Spain, the United States, and other islands like Curaçao. Establishing … Read more
.jpeg "Marissa Higgins’s Debut Novel Is a Sad, Sexy Ode to the Complexity of Human Connection")
Helen, the mononymous narrator of Marissa Higgins’s new novel, A Good Happy Girl, isn’t anything that by-the-book female protagonists are supposed to be. She’s not perky, perfect, adorkable, or straight—and it’s that genuine complexity that makes her one of the most exciting literary characters in recent memory. A lawyer–slash–foot model, Helen struggles in solitude with … Read more
If you could travel back in time, where would you go, and when? For readers of historical fiction, there’s no need to settle on just one place or period when journeying into the past. At their best, these literary works are deft and authentic—rigorously researched but effortlessly executed. They introduce you to figures whose concerns … Read more
In the early 1970s, the artist Audrey Flack traveled to the Basílica de la Macarena in Seville, Spain, to see a carved-wood statue called Macarena Esperanza, a polychrome depiction of a weeping Virgin Mary adorned with jewels, crystal tears, and false eyelashes. Flack is Jewish, but she was no less overcome by the Macarena’s sorrowful … Read more
