-- Maurice Sendak is nearing the end of his life. See this profile of how the writer and artist is constructing his legacy. Above is a mural he painted in Ithaca, New York; credit to The Ithaca Times.
-- You can livestream the "Future of Food" conference that's happening today and featuring the likes of Wendell Berry, Vandana Shiva, Marion Nestle, Will Allen, Eric Schlosser, Wes Jackson, and ... just days after his son's wedding ... the Prince of Wales.
-- "No day but today." The New York Public Library gives us a glimpse of the Word files of Jonathan Larson, the artist behind "RENT."
-- Be afraid: "PR Industry Fills Vacuum Left by Shrinking Newsrooms"
-- Jessa Crispin has a sharp, incisive, and troubling essay on how the dead bodies of girls (real ones and fake ones) are consuming our cultural landscape. She draws on numerous books of fiction and nonfiction, as well as television and news.
-- From The New Yorker: "The Reality Principle: The rise and rise of a television genre."
-- "Since 1978, the price of tuition at US colleges has increased over 900 percent, 650 points above inflation. To put that number in perspective, housing prices, the bubble that nearly burst the US economy, then the global one, increased only fifty points ... " An n+1 story on the insane culture of student loans: one that I am intimately familiar with and very serious about extricating myself from. Hear that, Citibank? I'm coming for you!
-- Lara Logan appeared on "60 Minutes" and gave an amazingly forthright account of her attack while covering the uprising in Egypt.
-- Go exploring: the new issue of Open Letters Monthly is out. See in particular an essay on two new translations of Javier Marías' fiction, and a piece on "the obscure object of financial fiction."
-- Also, check out the new issue of The Scholar & Feminist; its theme is "Critical Conceptions: Technology, Justice, and the Global Reproductive Market."
-- See also, on Oprah's website, a list of "five feminist classics to (re)read as a mom, wife, and writer." My take on the picks: 1) I haven't read it, but this looks promising; the author is amazing, 2) definitely, 3) no opinion; haven't read it, 4) good book that's too often minimized, but ... really? in the top five? 5) haven't read it but I'm skeptical ... what's our definition of a 'classic' here?
-- Guess what was cut out of the original version of The Picture of Dorian Gray?
-- A very nice profile of Robin Black, who has just seen the paperback edition of her story collection, If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This, released. See also my interview for The American Prospect with Black about her uncommon focus on old women in her fiction, as well as Black's review of Olive Kitteredge for Isak.
-- Now accepting applications for the Elizabeth Neuffer Fellowship.
-- There is peril on the environmental beat. See CJR for how "violence and threats severely restrain environmental coverage in much of the world."
-- "Poor Jane's Almanac"
-- TIME caught up with the Florida kids George W. Bush was reading to on September 11, 2001.
-- Photo editors on what makes the Situation Room image so powerful.Personally, my opinion rhymes with what Rex Hammock has to say.
-- Today in surprising news: the U.S. government has pledged an unprecedented amount of money to challenge homelessness.
-- Today in unsurprising news: inmates have extremely limited access to higher education.
-- Today in depressing news: "80 percent of U.S. families did not buy or read a book last year." Via Chris M.
-- Only a few Chinese writers were allowed to attend the PEN World Voices Festival. See also the culture diary that Amélie Nothomb kept for The Paris Review throughout the festival.
-- The Millions: "Watching Cuba Watching"
-- Wole Soyinka's reaction to the elections, and aftermath, in Nigeria.
-- The eighth annual Thessaloniki International Book Fair opens tomorrow. 'The Book Fair will host 500 publishers and firms, 190 writers from Greece and 23 other countries, 170 scheduled book presentations, an international conference on the theme "Books and Education" and the dedication to the Middle East.'
-- In 1985, Granta published a science issue "in response to a rising interest in the combination of science and literature." Today, it revives two pieces from that issue: "The Loves of the Tortoises," by Italo Calvino, and "The Possessed" by Oliver Sacks. Both pieces are freely available for two weeks, starting today.
-- Welcome to Book Country, a new online community launched by Penguin for genre writers and readers.See also the Publisher's Weekly feature. "Book Country also features a Genre Map, a cleverly designed interactive literary “map” of the known literary world, that uses a variety of landmark titles in various genres (say Walter Mosley’s Devil in a Blue Dress for Hard Boiled Noir) to point Book Country members to literary stars as well as literary hopefuls working in the genre."
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