Literature

Kelly is a former librarian and a long-time blogger at STACKED. She’s the editor/author of (DON’T) CALL ME CRAZY: 33 VOICES START THE CONVERSATION ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH and the editor/author of HERE WE ARE: FEMINISM FOR THE REAL WORLD. Her next book, BODY TALK, will publish in Fall 2020. Follow her on Instagram @heykellyjensen. View

For a collection titled Modern Poetry, the latest offering from Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Diane Seuss spends a fair amount of time communing with the past. In the title poem, named after a textbook she studied in college, she reminisces about how she and her roommate referred to William Carlos Williams as “Billy C. Billygoat,” and

Kendra Winchester is a Contributing Editor for Book Riot where she writes about audiobooks and disability literature. She is also the Founder of Read Appalachia, which celebrates Appalachian literature and writing. Previously, Kendra co-founded and served as Executive Director for Reading Women, a podcast that gained an international following over its six-season run. In her

This originally appeared in our Today in Books daily newsletter, where each day we round up the most interesting stories, news, essays, and other goings on in the world of books and reading. Sign up here if you want to get it. _____________________________________________________ For Book Recommendations, People Are Always Better Than Algorithms I don’t know

Jessica Plummer has lived her whole life in New York City, but she prefers to think of it as Metropolis. Her day job is in books, her side hustle is in books, and she writes books on the side (including a short story in Sword Stone Table from Vintage). She loves running, knitting, and thinking

In his haunting debut, Death Row Welcomes You: Visiting Hours in the Shadow of the Execution Chamber, Tennessee journalist Steven Hale sheds light on a rarely seen part of American society: the places where more than 2,700 people await execution by the state. Hale’s reporting began when, after a decade-long lull, Tennessee began executing the

By day, Leah Rachel von Essen is the editor-in-chief of Chicago Booth Magazine at the University of Chicago. By night, she reviews genre-bending fiction for Booklist, and writes regularly as a senior contributor at Book Riot. Her blog While Reading and Walking has over 10,000 dedicated followers over several social media outlets, including Instagram. She

MacArthur fellow and National Book Award finalist Hanif Abdurraqib is a prolific poet and author, writing across genres of poetry, essay and cultural criticism to great acclaim. Abdurraqib turns his sensitive lens towards basketball in his newest work, There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension. With carefully constructed and imaginative prose, he immerses us

Isabelle Popp has written all sorts of things, ranging from astrophysics research articles and math tests to crossword puzzles and poetry. These days she’s writing romance. When she’s not reading or writing, she’s probably knitting or scouring used book stores for vintage gothic romance paperbacks. Originally from New York, she’s as surprised as anyone that

Early in the shattering true crime memoir Rabbit Heart: A Mother’s Murder, A Daughter’s Story, Kristine S. Ervin pauses mid-sentence to tackle a question of grammar. Which tense does one use when discussing a relationship in which one person has died? It is a question that seems to form the crux of this stunning debut:

Katie Moench is a librarian, runner, and lover of baked goods. A school librarian in the Upper Midwest, Katie lives with her husband and dog and spends her free time drinking coffee, trying new recipes, and adding to her TBR. View All posts by Katie Moench In the 1980s, science fiction writing was entering what

Jennifer Thorne’s Diavola is an exercise in delicious twists and masterful suspense, told in the smart, snarky voice of Anna Pace, a jaded Manhattanite on a vacation quite literally from hell. Anna’s swanky upcoming family trip certainly doesn’t seem monstrous on the outside. A marketing artist by trade and a painter by passion, she’s thrilled

Rachel Rosenberg has been writing since she was a child—at 13, she was published alongside celebs and fellow teens in Chicken Soup For the Teenage Soul 2. Rachel has a degree in Creative Writing from Montreal’s Concordia University; she’s been published in a few different anthologies and publications, including Best Lesbian Love Stories 2008, Little

The National Book Critics Circle honors excellence in literature and focuses its work on elevating the conversation about books, reading, and criticism nationwide. The group formed in 1974 at New York’s legendary Algonquin Hotel. There are currently 600 members who are editors or literary critics. Every year, the group honors the best of the prior

What happens in Vegas . . . never stays in Vegas. It’s no secret that the bright lights of Sin City just barely disguise a dark legacy of bad deals, gangsters and buried bodies. What happens when post-COVID craziness and cryptocurrency fads come on the scene, fatalities pile up and two estranged sisters are caught

Welcome to Today in Books, where we report on literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more. It’s Friday. The sun is out. Baseball is back. March Madness has begun. And I’ve got a case of the wiggles. Let’s keep it lighter today. Worth a Thousand Words T, the New York Times’s style

With bylines in publications that include the London Review of Books, Harper’s and The New Yorker, Lauren Oyler has established herself as a cultural critic whose fresh, and often contrarian, assessments are well worth reading. Her first nonfiction book, No Judgment, comprises eight previously unpublished essays that will please Oyler’s admirers and serve as an

Kendra Winchester is a Contributing Editor for Book Riot where she writes about audiobooks and disability literature. She is also the Founder of Read Appalachia, which celebrates Appalachian literature and writing. Previously, Kendra co-founded and served as Executive Director for Reading Women, a podcast that gained an international following over its six-season run. In her

A little black box appears on health care and employment forms, census surveys and other official documents, requiring respondents to confine their racial identity to a single space that allows no fine distinctions. As Henry Louis Gates Jr. points out in his eloquent and powerful The Black Box: Writing the Race, such boxes are metaphors

The new documentary Are You a Librarian: The Untold Story of Black Librarians aims to show a new, pioneering perspective on Black librarians, and the great influence they’ve wielded, which reached outside of libraries and into moments like the Civil Rights Movement. Rodney E. Freeman Jr. is the executive producer of the documentary, and a