The Pulitzer Prize-winning author is just one of many artists from Appalachia who are probing the crisis in their work, while taking pains to ensure that it doesn’t define the region and its people.
An online exhibition includes access to personal newspaper advertisements from 1860 to 1879 transcribed from archives.
(Jacquelyn Sundberg and Nathalie Cooke)
Personal ads of ‘the Agony Column’ were full of longing, tragedy and profound misfortune. Intrigue they generated has had an enduring effect on literature and film.
In Thomas Hardy’s novel The Woodlanders, the trees sing. Hardy’s exploration of the relationship between humans and trees resonates in an epoch of environmental catastrophe.
Grass Yellow Butterfly, Australian Butterfly Sanctuary, Kuranda, Queensland.
David Clode/Unsplash
An expert discusses how much of his coauthored novels former president Bill Clinton wrote himself, compared to his wife and fellow novelist, Hillary Clinton.
Literary devices abound in Taylor Swift’s body of work.
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Andrew Newman, Stony Brook University (The State University of New York)
An English professor takes a critical look at why today’s students are assigned the same books that were assigned decades ago – and why American school curricula are so difficult to change.
A still from the film version of Hugo Bettauer’s prophetic 1922 novel ‘The City Without Jews.’
Barbican
This Book Week, don’t stress about the costume and don’t worry about what the other mums or dads are sewing or buying. Costumes are fun but what matters is to let your kid read what they enjoy.
A new historical novel, redolent of the masterful writing of Henry James and Charlotte Brontë, explores the themes of loss, alienation and displacement.
An online audience is reading the vampire novel for the first time, en masse.
Diane Barros/The Boston Globe via Getty Images
A newsletter sends out chronological snippets from the 125-year-old novel ‘Dracula.’ Fans on the internet go wild.
The Congo Basin’s rainforests in central Africa are sometimes called Earth’s second lungs (after the Amazon) because of its ability to store carbon.
Guenterguni via Getty Images
Part historical novel, part speculative fiction, A History of Dreams examines the themes of inequality and authoritarianism from the perspective of a coven of witchy young women.