ArtsJournal: Arts, Culture, Ideas

WORDS

On A Late Summer Road Trip, Check Out These Literary Stops In Each State

From the best places to read to poets of note in each state, this map is a treasure trove of some of the best writers the U.S. has given the literary world. - LitHub

Creating Something Better From The Ashes Of A Beloved News Site

After some anger and grief, and years of frustration, this is what happens now when news sites die: “Former DCist reporter Colleen Grablick remembers fellow DCist coworker Maddie Poore asking: ‘Local news co-op, when?’” - Nieman Lab

Fire Up Your Libby And Overdrive

Former President Barack Obama’s annual summer reading list is here - and it’s good. - LitHub

News Publishers Increase Their Efforts On Reddit As Traffic Soars

"Some, such as Yahoo, Puck, and New York Times Opinion, have launched new Reddit accounts in the last several months. Others, such as Rolling Stone, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Independent, the AP, and Newsweek, have restarted existing accounts or dedicated more resources to them." - Adweek

AI Has Dramatically Speeded Up Work On Reassembling The Epic Of Gilgamesh

Many parts of the ancient Babylonian tale are still missing, and searching through hundreds of thousands of surviving cuneiform fragments to separate portions of the narrative from, say, private letters or sales receipts is slow and tedious. A new AI project has led to "extreme acceleration" in the field. - The New York Times

Will Colleen Hoover’s Reign Over The Romance Lists Subside Now That Her Movie Is Out, And Not Great?

Well … no. “For all the tonal confusion of Hoover’s novels, readers continue to gravitate toward the repetitive writing and heavy emphasis on shocking twists.” - The Atlantic

When Your Novel Accidentally Meets The Zeitgeist

The author has been checking out Goodreads to “see how the average enthusiastic reader has been responding to this book. It is in equal parts some of the greatest validation I’ve ever received and the most terrifying cultural report I’ve ever read.” - The Guardian (UK)

After Last Year’s Absolute Disaster, This Year’s Hugo Awards Came With A Full Transparency Report

The list of winners seems innocuous, but it comes with a link to a report that details everything possible, along with a link to the full statistics. Why? Last year’s edition was rife with censorship, and this year had its own ballot-stuffing issues. - Glasgow Worldcon

Iowa Law Banning Books With Sexual Content Goes Back Into Effect

The law, which will be appealed again, “bans any titles that describe sexual acts from K-12 schools, with the exception of religious texts. The law also limits instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity before seventh grade.” - The New York Times

The Voynich Manuscript Is A 500-Year-Old Mystery

“Why riddle a puzzle? And yet that’s what the Voynich did, over and over again. The moment you felt you were getting somewhere, it coiled in on itself, retreating from your grasp, into another disguise.” - The Atlantic

What Does A State-Level Version Of The Atlantic Magazine Look Like? In North Carolina, It Looks Like This

"With a mission of publishing 'deep reporting about power and place in North Carolina,' the publication (called The Assembly) has an ambitious vision of curiosity-driven reporting that holds power to account. … (It) takes inspiration from other statewide magazines like California Sunday and Texas Monthly." - Nieman Lab

Oklahoma Governor’s Push To Get Bibles In Every Classroom Goes Right Back To 19th-Century Publishers

Starting in the 1830s, the American Bible Society began a campaign to get inexpensive Bibles into homes "in every part of the land," while the American Sunday-School Union, which considered secular books "sweet poison" for young minds, worked to replace them in classrooms with Christian instructional books and evangelical tracts. - Slate (MSN)

How Far Will Readers Go To Hear Music Inspired By Their Favorite Books?

Even if you don’t include the music inspired by Shakespeare’s plays, pretty darn far, like countries’ worth of travel. - The New York Times

These Are The Thirteen Books Totally Banned In Utah Classrooms

Good luck keeping A Court of Thorns and Roses out of the hands of teenagers, but also, this is horrifying - and includes Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake, for instance, along with Judy Blume, Rupi Kaur, and (are we surprised?) other women authors. - Salt Lake Tribune

Zora Neale Hurston’s Unfinished Final Novel Will Be Published

"(She) was working on a sequel to her 1939 novel Moses, Man of the Mountain when she died in 1960. That sequel, The Life of Herod the Great, will be available in January 2025. The manuscript had been in Hurston’s archives at the University of Kansas, accessible only to scholars." - The Guardian

Our Free Newsletter

Join our 30,000 subscribers

Latest

Don't Miss

function my_excerpt_length($length){ return 200; } add_filter('excerpt_length', 'my_excerpt_length');