We have arrived at a series of stark moments in our national narrative. Drones, climate-change-deniers, divesting fossil fuel investments, Tom Magliozzi, Francesca Lia Block, a friend’s new baby, and paying it forward at the holidays: these were some of the things I was writing about when... Read More

A Hospital From Hell, Adam Nossiter’s devastatingly intimate portrait of one Ebola treatment center in Sierra Leone, takes us inside the epidemic, where “treatment centers” turn into filthy prison warehouses for the miserable and dying, where Ebola sufferers lie untended, and those exposed but not actually... Read More

Tiananmen Square haunts Hong Kong. I watched an interview with one of the Hong Kong students staked out in protest of their imminent loss of democracy. “Aren’t you afraid?” asked the journalist. “No,” replied the student, “I am not afraid. My... Read More

Tom C. Hunley, over at Steel Toe Books, has an open reading period this month and next: order one of their titles direct from the press, and pay no submission fee for your full length manuscript. Shivani Mehta’s strange, evocative prose... Read More

From Steve Abbott, Columbus Ohio poet, teacher and activist: It is with great sadness that I report the death in Columbus of Jennifer Bosveld–mentor, fellow poet, author of multiple poetry books and chapbooks and editor of multiple anthologies of poets... Read More

I’m going to put this bluntly: Go see the Aaron Swartz documentary, The Internet’s Own Boy. Freedom of speech, forward progress in science and technology, grassroots democracy, prodigious and passionate talent, this is an important film. In the movie Swartz’s partner quotes... Read More

Amazon is a bully. Not news, I know. They’ve gone to war against Hachette Book Group, which publishes some big hitters including JK Rowling (whose forthcoming book is not currently available for pre-order on amazon, as it normally would be–see “bully,”... Read More

Cornelius Eady has a review in the NY Times of The Crossover, a novel in verse for middle-school kids, by Kwame Alexander, that sounds pretty compelling for the adult reader as well. Vijay Seshadri’s Pulitzer makes me happy. Brian Lehrer on WNYC posts... Read More

Against climate defeatism. And while we’re on the subject, this story of the fight for fossil fuel divestment at Harvard reminds me how divestment became a lever in the fight against South African apartheid. Who in 2014 sustains a level of... Read More

Salman Rushdie opens his NY Times tribute to Gabriel Garcia Marquez with the statement Gabo lives. Alongside the kerfuffle between Netanyahu and the newly united PLO-Hamas Palestinian leadership, Mahmoud Abbas this week made a statement in sympathy with survivors of... Read More