The City of Good Death opens with the discovery of a mysterious body by two boatmen on the Ganges river, in the holy Indian city of Kashi, where everyone knows three basic facts: dying in the holy city promises freedom from rebirth …
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With sparkling prose and deeply built characters, Leila Rafei’s debut novel tells the story of Egypt’s 2011 revolution from three alternating perspectives.
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Today, we share books of fiction and poetry written by Black authors. We’re inspired by the #BlackoutBestsellerlist movement, which aims to flood the bestseller lists with books by Black authors. (Your homework: Buy two books by Black authors. And buy them from a local, independent bookstore.)
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In her latest novel, Redhead by the Side of the Road, no detail is too small for Anne Tyler. She’s at her best when she’s showing us the beauty in the ordinary, and reminding us how important it is to truly see ourselves.
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“I think poetry is more relevant today than, perhaps, it's ever been,” Courtney told me. “We have so much going on in the world. I think it allows people an outlet, a way to express themselves…”
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Carrie Callaghan’s historical novel Salt the Snow is so rich in detail that I found myself transported to the streets of 1930s Moscow. The frigid cold of the Russian winter is palpable—along with the stark living conditions, the nineteenth century mansion that’s been repurposed as a newspaper office …
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To meet Gene Bruskin is to meet a titan of the labor movement. Talking with him opens up a world that most history books barely broach. A tall, burly man with a booming voice, wispy gray hair and a constant cough that interrupts just about every other sentence, Bruskin is the embodiment of what it means to be a grassroots labor organizer.
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When I asked the author why collaboration with other artists is so important to him, he told me, “It’s what feeds me, what keeps me alive.”
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While other American girls were joining girl scouts and sports teams, Keena lived in a tent and learned to track and watch out for wild animals, like elephants, leopards, hippos, impala, kudu, and even lions. Except, that is, whenever her parents needed to return to Philadelphia.
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“The absence of people of color in the greatest of white literature,” Scott said. “I do think that it's a weird absence. It's a gaping hole. ... [W.E.B.] Du Bois’s line about race, ‘the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line,’ is true. And now we're into the twenty-first.”
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In Mike Maggio’s new collection of short stories, Letters from Inside, bizarre things happen to ordinary people. “M,” while crossing Washington’s Key Bridge, finds himself unwittingly at the center of a scandal that sweeps the city.
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This past month, the Westmoreland Congregational Church hosted “Visions of Home: An Afternoon of Palestinian Poetry and Art.”
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When you start reading Maryland native Rion Amilcar Scott’s new short story collection, The World Doesn’t Require You, you realize, almost from the first page, that this is something special.
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