Scholar Shannon McHugh reminds us that, going all the way back to the medieval Italian origins of the form, sonnets have been written to express deep affection for best buddies, siblings and other family members, living and dead — and sometimes even to the saints. - The Conversation
Firestrom Books in Asheville got a call from a distributor asking them to take in eight tons of books rejected by Duval County Public Schools (Jacksonville). Now Firestorm is giving those volumes to anyone who asks — including quite a few Floridians. - The Washington Post (MSN)
New technology in the form of apps and tools offering real time translation have simplified the world so much that we don't really need to learn other languages any more. - Salon
More than 600 writers have signed a letter that "condemns PEN’s relative silence on the unfolding genocide in Gaza ... on the heels of two prominent novelists cutting ties with the organization over its decision to platform controversial actor and outspoken ceasefire opponent Mayim Bialik.” - LitHub
Was it No Child Left Behind? Common Core? COVID-19 school shutdowns? Or - as is the case for most people, from child to adult - the smart phone? - Slate
Romantic fiction, that is. With romances propping up the entire publishing industry, how hard could it be to write one? (Turns out writing a whole book simply isn’t that easy.) - Irish Times
Current debates about writing machines are not as fresh as they seem. As is quietly acknowledged in the footnotes of scientific papers, much of the intellectual infrastructure of today’s advances was laid decades ago. - Hedgehog Review
The Akwesasne Freedom School, on the St. Regis Mohawk Reservation, on the St. Lawrence River where New York, Ontario and Quebec meet, teaches K-8 classes entirely in Mohawk. The school, run by a nonprofit, has both American and Canadian students but accepts no money from either government. - The Christian Science Monitor
"It is testament to the fresh energy injected into the (bande dessinée) market by the pandemic: between 2019 and 2021, fanned by measures such as the Culture Pass that gave teenagers hundreds of euros to spend, it almost doubled in size from 48.4m sales a year to 87.2m." - The Guardian
Plenty of people, upon hearing the biggest music announcement of the year, started thinking about diacritical marks and then talking about them on social media. - The New York Times
"I called a friend with kids and said, 'Have you heard of an author named Raina Telgemeier?' 'Of course,' she said, sounding bemused, as if I’d asked whether she was familiar with the automobile." As one school librarian said, "Children reread those books over and over and over." - The Atlantic (MSN)
Perhaps no writer has been more clairvoyant about our current technological age than Neal Stephenson. His novels coined the term metaverse, laid the conceptual groundwork for cryptocurrency, and imagined a geoengineered planet. - The Atlantic (MSN)
