Village of Crickets

"Through the empty arch comes a wind, a mental wind blowing relentlessly over the heads of the dead, in search of new landscapes and unknown accents; a wind that smells of baby's spittle, crushed grass, and jellyfish veil, announcing the constant...

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Rachel Zucker reads, "New Normal"

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Every 16-year-old in Sweden will receive a copy of ‘We Should All Be Feminists’

With sweet 16 comes an introduction to gender politics.

“When I was 16, I don’t think I knew what the word ‘feminist’ meant. I don’t think I knew the word at all. But I was a feminist. And I hope that the 16-year-olds that will read this book in Sweden will also decide that they’re feminists. Mostly, I hope very soon that one day we will not need to be feminists. Because we will live in a world that is truly just and equal.”

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Don't want your books anymore? Somebody else does. Here's all you need to know about how to donate your books to prisons.

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Biophilia

Christopher Marley grew up with a freezer stuffed with dead birds. His father, a passionate bird breeder, couldn’t part with the birds when they died, so he stored them alongside the family’s frozen food. Now Marley, also passionate about birds as well as all types of nature, preserves beautiful creatures after they’ve died by combining art and design with taxidermy and other preservation techniques. In his new book Biophilia, which means “love of life,” Marley shares his artfully photographed collections of insects, sea life, reptiles, birds, plants and minerals. From pastel urchins arranged like a tray of meringues to vibrant Charly Harper-style insect collages to stunning portraits of snakes, wasps, rocks, crabs, bird wings and more, Marlow’s work is nothing short of magnificent. Every image in this book is a masterful work of art. – Carla Sinclair

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Readers, I come not to give you another Best Of list, but to make you think. I could do so in many ways, given the loose parameters of the book list, but because women’s writing remains woefully un...

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The Displaced Person | Reading Flannery O'Connor in the Age of Islamophobia

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Many of our self-styled Christian leaders would do well to seek out “The Displaced Person,” which, like O’Connor’s best work, carries a dark moral force without recourse to didacticism or sentimentality. In its dogged focus on the obligation of Christians to help the oppressed, the story shrugs off its topical elements; O’Connor dwells not on the abominations of the Third Reich but on the long shadow cast by this kind of evil.

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How to Triumph Like a Girl

Ada Limón

I like the lady horses best, how they make it all look easy, like running 40 miles per hour is as fun as taking a nap, or grass. I like their lady horse swagger, after winning. Ears up, girls, ears up! But mainly, let’s be honest, I like that they’re ladies. As if this big dangerous animal is also a part of me, that somewhere inside the delicate skin of my body, there pumps an 8-pound female horse heart, giant with power, heavy with blood. Don’t you want to believe it? Don’t you want to tug my shirt and see the huge beating genius machine that thinks, no, it knows, it’s going to come in first.

Ada Limón is a National Book Awards finalist for her most recent collection of poetry, Bright Dead Things

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Faith47 is an internationally-acclaimed street and studio-based artist from Cape Town, South Africa. Following an active street art career spanning more than 15 years, her work can now be found in major cities around the world. Using a wide range of media, her approach is explorative and substrate appropriate – from found and rescued objects, to time-layered and history-textured city walls and their accretions, to studio-prepared canvas and wood.

Aqua Regalia – Chapter Two runs from Thursday, 19 November-19 December 2015 at Jonathan LeVine Gallery in New York.

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DIVEDAPPER // Michael Klein

"There is something not just mysterious, but also occult about writing."

Fascinating interview in Divedapper yesterday!

It’s a big risk to be writing about it. The whole thing about, “Is it true or not true?” My answer is always, “Who gives a fuck if it’s true or not true?” -- Michael Klein, on writing his newest book, When I Was a Twin

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Jeanette Winterson meets Marlon James: ‘You can’t keep upgrading people like you do with your phone’

The novelists

"It is vacating life. Nothing is worth that. I always tell my students, “You are going to suffer, so make sure you suffer legitimately, for something you believe in. Don’t suffer illegitimately by trying to pretend [to be] something you’re not.” But nobody really tells them that they’re going to be unhappy." --Jeanette Winterson in conversation with Marlon James, for The Guardian

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"We write because we believe the human spirit cannot be tamed and should not be trained."  ― Nikki Giovanni

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Tonight's National Book Foundation, National Book Awards Finalist Reading was Live-streamed tonight. Watch it on the link above.

Not having tickets for tonight's reading turned out to be a gift. As I listened in on these authors, the cold night leaked in around my windows, and I stayed tucked beneath my quilt... with a cup of tea and my own astonishment.

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“What does labor want? We want more schoolhouses and less jails; more books and less arsenals; more learning and less vice; more leisure and less greed; more justice and less revenge; in fact, more of the opportunities to cultivate our better natures, to make manhood more noble, womanhood more beautiful, and childhood more happy and bright.” ― Samuel Gompers [artwork by Shepard Fairey]

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“We’re all fucked up because in English the phrase “to make someone happy” suggests that’s possible. ― Rachel Zucker