Category Archives: Authors

A Whydunnit in Q-Sharp Major….With A Message.

Posted on March 25, 2010 by kara

The shortlist for The Lost Man Booker Prize – a one-off prize to honour the books published in 1970 that were not eligible for consideration for the Booker Prize – was announced last week. The six books on the list … Continue reading →

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Perdu Dans La Traduction

Posted on March 20, 2010 by kara

My life was hurrying, racing tragically toward its end. And yet at the same time it was dripping so slowly, so very slowly now, hour by hour, minute by minute. One always has to wait until the sugar melts, the … Continue reading →

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One Day in the Life of Sylvia Plath

Posted on March 12, 2010 by kara

Journal Entry from Cambridge February 19th, 1956 To whom it may concern: Every now and then there comes a time when the neutral and impersonal forces of the world turn and come together in a thunder-crack of judgment. There is … Continue reading →

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National Women’s Day Spotlight: A “Hyena in a Petticoat”

Posted on March 8, 2010 by kara

If you are going to only read one weighty tome this National Women’s Month, try this one, written 218 years ago. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects written in 1792 by British … Continue reading →

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Ruthless

Posted on March 5, 2010 by kara

Martin Stannard’s long awaited biography of Muriel Spark is due out April 12th. In it, Stannard asserts that Dame Muriel’s infamous “ruthlessness” is what she as a woman artist a male-dominated world needed to have to succeed. Spark was “a … Continue reading →

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From the Shenanigans Files: Literary Hoax Alert!

Posted on March 4, 2010 by kara

Okay. Jean Baptiste Botul is a clearly fictional philosopher created by a French journalist named Frédéric Pagès, who writes for a clearly satirical weekly called the Le Canard Enchaîné. Mr. Botul has a wikipedia page and a fan club that … Continue reading →

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Lucille Clifton, American Poet. 1936 – 2010

Posted on February 28, 2010 by kara

Lucille Clifton, a distinguished and prolific American poet and children’s book author, died on February 17th in Baltimore at 73. Clifton’s work was notable for it’s grace and it’s affirmation through her personal exploration of the experience of being black … Continue reading →

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Celebrating Black History Month, Old Skool Style

Posted on February 25, 2010 by kara

Originally published in 1974 at the height of the Black Arts Movement, The Black Book is a dizzying anthology of hundreds of archival documents, photographs, eyewitness accounts and observations compiled by folk historians and scholars to preserve and publicize profound … Continue reading →

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The Chick Lit of Horror is Alive and Kicking

Posted on February 25, 2010 by kara

It may have taken a Young Adult genre explosion called Twilight – for which legions of grown women lined up to buy – to draw attention to a staggering surge in a sub genre to the science fiction/fantasy/romance world called … Continue reading →

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Master of the Swedish Moors

Posted on February 21, 2010 by kara

Nicholas Wroe and Henning Mankell discuss the depressed detective, and why Mankell and Ingmar Bergman are called the “Swedish Brothers of Gloom”. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/feb/20/henning-mankell-interview

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