Article Archive

In this regular feature, we offer a few suggestions for podcasts, smartphone apps, Web tools, newsletters, museum shows, and gallery openings: a medley of literary curiosities that you might enjoy. This issue’s 3 for Free features the WordNet app, the Books on the Nightstand podcast, and online video poetry journal Jupiter 88.

As literature concerned with today’s often-grim realities gains new prominence, a handful of literary organizations are highlighting the connection between poetry and politics and strengthening the network of socially conscious writers. 

In this issue we offer a look at Alison Bechdel’s graphic memoir Are You My Mother? published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt this month. 

A look at the risks and rewards of book-publication contests, including an overview of the contest model, a breakdown of the budgets behind three major book prizes, the intangible benefits of winning, and an interview with four frequent judges.

The agent of Jami Attenberg, David Mitchell, Carolyn Parkhurst, Matthew Quick, and others offers guidance about publishing credits, MFA programs, and unagented submissions.

Literary MagNet chronicles the start-ups and closures, successes and failures, anniversaries and accolades, changes of editorship and special issues—in short, the news and trends—of literary magazines. This issue’s MagNet features Digital Americana, Lumberyard, Sawmill, draft: a journal of process, and Poetry.

Sherman Alexie, winner of the other NBA, along with other poets and writers, shows off his jump shot in HooPalousa, a basketball tournament-cum-fund-raiser that aims to help create an endowment at the University of Idaho for a Native American MFA candidate.

With so many good books being published every month, some literary titles worth exploring can get lost in the stacks. Page One offers the first lines of a dozen recently released books, including Esi Edugyan’s Half-Blood Blues and Adam Levin’s Hot Pink, as the starting point for a closer look at these new and noteworthy titles.

The late poet laureate Philip Levine spoke in early 2012 about his plans for the position and the range of influences on his work through the years.

For nearly a century, the ampersand has been a key feature of certain strands of American poetry. To understand its history in the genre—and the role it plays for contemporary poets—one must return to the character’s origins.