Lit Lists

Friday Lit Links — Week of March 30

March 30, 2018
by WLT

The words "Once upon a time" written on a piece of paper with a ink pen resting but poised to continue on the final stroke

 

News, Reviews, and Interviews

 

Aminatta Forna, writing for the PBS NewsHour, analyzes the power of crafting one’s own narrative in the face of suffering as daunting as that of the Parkland shooting.

Wednesday will mark the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Congressman and civil rights activist John Lewis took time to discuss King’s “belief in society’s ability to change.”

In her piece for Serious Eats, 2016 Neustadt juror Porochista Khakpour reflects on her experience as a child celebrating the Persian holiday of Nowruz with her family while growing up in Los Angeles.

WLT contributor Mukoma Wa Ngugi has released his The Rise of the African Novel: Politics of Language, Identity, and Ownership, which chronicles the evolution of an organic voice against the backdrop of colonization.

Pattiann Rogers, also a contributor to WLT, is being awarded the John Burroughs Medal for Lifetime Achievement in Poetry.

NSK Prize nominee Jacqueline Woodson has been awarded the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, presented for outstanding work in children’s and YA literature. The award will be presented in Stockholm on May 28.

 

Fun Finds and Inspiration

 

It’s National Poetry Month! Poets.org has a bevy of ways to commemorate and celebrate.

If you’ll be in the NYC area April 10, mark your calendar for the Albertine Book Prize Battle. Lit Hub editor in chief Jonny Diamond will moderate a panel (including 2013 Puterbaugh Fellow Maaza Mengiste) debating this year’s nominees. The shortlisted authors include Mathias Énard and 2016 Puterbaugh Fellow Alain Mabanckou.

The PEN World Voices Festival returns this April 16–22, also in New York. More than 165 writers and artists gather to discuss the topic of resistance. Noted speakers will include Sean Penn and Hilary Clinton.

The annual symposium The Gathering comes to Keystone College July 13–15. Speakers this year include Suzanne Fisher Staples, who nominated Virginia Euwer Wolff for the 2011 NSK Prize, and Tracy K. Smith, whose Wade in the Water is featured in our summer reading recommendations in the upcoming May issue.

Finally, baseball is back! Opening day was yesterday, and Alan Bisbort at Literary Kicks looks at the sport’s unique place within the literary zeitgeist of the United States.