literature

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Most Ancient and Medieval Literature Is Long Gone

There's little chance of recovering any of it, but we can estimate how much there was

(Newser) - For three centuries, the Ptolemaic Dynasty worked to gather all the books ever written into one library in Alexandria, Egypt. Then it all burned down. By one account, the untold thousands of manuscripts smoldered for six months. As Laura Spinney explains in the Guardian, nobody today even knows the library'...

Assistant Principal Fired for Reading Butt Book Isn't Giving Up

School district upholds Toby Price's termination, but he'll appeal to Mississippi's Chancery Courts

(Newser) - Update: Toby Price remains fired for what his district says was poor judgment in storytime choice. The assistant principal had appealed his termination for reading I Need a New Butt to second-graders at Gary Road Elementary School near Jackson, Miss., but on Monday, his legal team let him know the...

Poet and Author Who Sparked 1990s Men's Movement Dies

Robert Bly, best known for Iron John , was 94

(Newser) - Robert Bly, one of the most prominent American poets of the last half century and author of the best-selling men’s movement classic Iron John, has died. He was 95. His daughter, Mary Bly, said her father died Sunday at his home in Minneapolis after suffering from dementia for 14...

'Uncompromising' Writer Takes Home Nobel for Literature

Abdulrazak Gurnah of Tanzania began writing as a 21-year-old refugee in exile

(Newser) - The 2021 Nobel Prize for literature was announced Thursday, an award that has in the past honored poets, novelists, and even a songwriter, Bob Dylan. The AP reports that Tanzanian writer Abdulrazak Gurnah took home the top award, with the Swedish Academy noting the Nobel was in recognition of Gurnah'...

COVID Has Ruined One More Thing
COVID Has Ruined
One More Thing
Dec 8, 2020 8:45 AM CST

COVID Has Ruined One More Thing

The Bad Sex in Fiction Awards will not take place this year

(Newser) - The year 2020 giveth, and it taketh away. Mostly taketh away, even in the world of literature, where an honor doled out annually for nearly 30 years has been nixed due to the coronavirus. The Guardian reports that the Literary Review has canceled its Bad Sex in Fiction Awards, which...

Her 'Unmistakable' Voice Just Earned Her a Nobel

American poet Louise Glueck wins Nobel Prize in Literature

(Newser) - The Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded Thursday after several years of controversy and scandal for the world's preeminent literary accolade. American poet Louise Glueck was the recipient of the $1.1 million prize "for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal,"...

Eminent Critic Harold Bloom Dead at 89
Anxiety of Influence
Author Dies at 89
OBITUARY
Oct 15, 2019 12:11 AM CDT

Anxiety of Influence Author Dies at 89

Eminent critic Harold Bloom was still teaching days ago

(Newser) - Harold Bloom, the eminent critic and Yale professor whose seminal The Anxiety of Influence and melancholy regard for literature's old masters made him a popular author and standard-bearer of Western civilization amid modern trends, died Monday at age 89. Bloom's wife, Jeanne, said that he had been in...

Author Wins Lit Prize From School Where She's a Cleaner

Author Caitriona Lally once attended Trinity College Dublin, where she's now been honored

(Newser) - An emerging Irish author has been awarded a major literary prize by the university where she works as a cleaner. Per CBC , Caitriona Lally has won the 2018 Rooney Prize for Irish Literature for her debut novel, "Eggshells." Lally won the honor from Trinity College Dublin, where she...

Copy of Lady Chatterley's Lover Could Fetch Obscene Cash

The paperback was used by the judge in a landmark obscenity trial against the publisher

(Newser) - A paperback copy of Lady Chatterley's Lover used by the judge in the UK obscenity trial of the novel's publisher is expected to sell at auction for up to $20,000, auctioneer Sotheby's said Wednesday. Penguin Books was prosecuted in 1960 for publishing DH Lawrence's book...

7 &#39;Classics&#39; to Take Off Your Reading List
7 'Classics' to Take Off
Your Reading List
in case you missed it
Apr 28, 2018 10:05 AM CDT

7 'Classics' to Take Off Your Reading List

And what to read instead

(Newser) - If you've ever found yourself struggling through a so-called "classic" book only to find yourself thinking, "How racist/sexist/boring," you're not alone. The editors of GQ, along with some current authors, have put together a list of 21 such books (technically 20, because one of them...

Beyonce Has a Surprise for 4 'Bold' College Students

Singer offering scholarships for 4 different colleges to celebrate 'Lemonade' anniversary

(Newser) - Beyonce has apparently taken her message of feminist empowerment to heart, and she's putting her money where her melodious mouth is, per Pitchfork . To mark the first anniversary of her Lemonade album, the singer is offering four "Formation Scholars" scholarships for young black women for the 2017-2018 school...

Out of Castro's Revolution, the 'Boom' Was Born

Fidel's success inspired Garcia Marquez, a generation of influential writers

(Newser) - When Fidel Castro seized power in Cuba in 1959, the reverberations of his revolution caused a somewhat unlikely consequence: An explosion of literature never before seen in Latin America, and only rarely seen elsewhere, of such quantity and quality that it was labeled "the boom." “It’s...

Author's 'Ballet Dancer' Genitals Earn Bad Sex in Fiction Prize

Congrats, we guess, to Italian writer Erri De Luca

(Newser) - Italian writer Erri De Luca had already won the 2013 European Prize for Literature and been hailed as "the writer of the decade," so what else was left to accomplish but win the 2016 Bad Sex in Fiction Award. De Luca took home the 24th annual prize for...

Best Conspiracy Theories Ever in Pop Culture
Pop Culture's
Weirdest
'Cover-Ups'
Oct 26, 2016 8:47 AM CDT

Pop Culture's Weirdest 'Cover-Ups'

Vulture compiles 70 biggest celebrity conspiracy theories—including that Katy Perry is JonBenet Ramsey

(Newser) - Take a timeout from Election 2016 conspiracy theories and do a deep dive instead into tinfoil-hat whispers on the pop culture front. Vulture has spent the past few months performing what it calls an "exhaustive cataloguing" of the biggest cover-ups in music, literature, film, TV, and "anything else...

And the Nobel for Literature Goes to: Bob Dylan

For his 'poetic expressions'

(Newser) - Sometimes the Nobel winner in literature is an obscure writer little known to mainstream audiences. And then there's this year's winner: Bob Dylan. The Nobel panel chose the 75-year-old "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition," it announced in a press...

Modern Literary Mystery May Be Solved

Italian journalist thinks he knows who the real Elena Ferrante is

(Newser) - It's what the New York Times calls "one of the most intriguing literary mysteries in recent history." But now Elena Ferrante, author of several best-selling novels who has lived under that pseudonym since the early 1990s, appears to have been unmasked by Italian journalist Claudio Gatti. In...

Why Art Should Hit You Over the Head

Subtlety isn't all it's cracked up to be, writes Forrest Wickman

(Newser) - Forrest Wickman isn't a fan of subtlety in art, though he's probably in the minority. Today we tend to use phrases like "hits you over the head" or "lacks subtlety" as criticisms—a trend that came with the rise of highbrow and lowbrow cultural hierarchies in...

Writer Who Captured Chernobyl Disaster Wins Nobel

Svetlana Alexievich is known for journalistic style, eyewitness accounts

(Newser) - A Belarus writer known for what Swedish Academy judges called "her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time," won the Nobel Prize for Literature Thursday, the Guardian reports. Svetlana Alexievich, 67, has made her name by instilling a journalistic style heavy on eyewitness accounts...

Linguist Claims He's Solved Gulliver's Travels Riddle

Irving Rothman says he's solved the centuries-old mystery

(Newser) - Long have scholars debated the origins of the "nonsense" language in Jonathan Swift's most famous novel, Gulliver's Travels, though Isaac Asimov once said making sense of it is a "waste of time" because "I suspect that Swift simply made up nonsense for the purpose."...

Nobel-Winning Author Guenter Grass Dies at 87

German writer known for The Tin Drum faced controversy in recent years

(Newser) - Guenter Grass, the Nobel-winning German writer who gave voice to the generation that came of age during the horrors of the Nazi era but later ran into controversy over his own World War II past and stance toward Israel, has died. He was 87. Grass was lauded by Germans for...

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