British author Alan Sillitoe: March 4, 1928 - April 25, 2010
Novels, poetry, and the short story–today’s news is friendly to all forms, so you’re bound to find something that interests you.
- British author Alan Sillitoe, a prolific novelist and short story writer who rose to fame in the 1950s, died Sunday at the age of 82. Sillitoe was best known for his novel Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1958), which chronicled the us-against-them mentality of its 22-year-old protagonist and labeled Sillitoe as one of several “angry young men” writers critiquing the British class system. Throughout his career, Sillitoe published over 50 books and dabbled in poetry, nonfiction, and children’s literature. The Guardian and New York Times have more about Sillitoe’s life and work.
- As National Poetry Month comes to a close, NPR discusses The Art of Losing: Poems of Grief and Healing, a powerful new poetry anthology compiled by Kevin Young. The collection (which takes its title from Elizabeth Bishop’s classic “One Art”) includes poems that Young believes capture the unique emotions associated with loss and grieving. Young believes in poetry’s ability to “capture a moment, a feeling, perhaps a fleeting feeling, and even make [...] music out of it,” and he felt an anthology like this needed to be made. Listen to the NPR story for more details and to hear some of Young’s own poems about loss.
- Short stories are somewhat mysterious creatures–sometimes you think you know where one is going, but by the time it ends you’re left scratching your head and thinking, “What???” You’re not alone. At last weekend’s LA Times Festival of Books, a panel featuring short story writers Antonya Nelson, Ron Carlson, and Marisa Silver attempted to unpack what exactly defines a short story. The conclusion? “The short story, often grounded in the lyrical moment as opposed to the narrative arc, can’t be a totally known thing,” writes Jacket Copy. Unlike the novel, the short story doesn’t attempt to answer every question it raises, so just relax and enjoy the “lyrical moment.”
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