Theory: In which we wash our hands

This month we’re traveling in the world of science fiction. From nineteenth-century Pakistan to twenty-first century Russia, authors rocket through time and space to explore worlds uncharted yet oddly familiar. Replicants and aliens, spaceships and shapeshifters are all in play; the future mirrors the present, and the intelligence is anything but artificial. Lift off with Stanisław Lem, Tomasz Kołodziejczak, Olga Slavnikova, Zoran Živković, Hiroshi Yamamoto, Machado de Assis, Liu Cixin, Pablo A. Castro, and Muhammad Husain Jah, and prepare to be launched into the fantastic.


From the American Book Review:

100 Best Last Lines from Novels


The Atlantic's Literary Interviews

This exhibition explores the life, work, and legacy of Jane Austen (1775–1817), regarded as one of the greatest English novelists.


For the goth/horror/dark fantasy lit lover -
the Black Quill Awards


Shakespeare's trash

Speaking of Trash:

Sales boost for the physics book found in Tiger's car

More companies, including McDonald's, are being moved to verse to advertise their products. Is this a welcome development for poetry?

“Waste is good, important. Especially in art. It’s not the perfectly placed and chosen object that rules. It’s a pile of things and one might catch your eye but its always in context. We need too much. As long as we have hands and bodies.” - The Rumpus Interview with Poetry Rock Star Eileen Myles

A hopeful note:
Poems can stop bulldozers.


A Winter Evening
Georg Trakl

Window with falling snow is arrayed.
Long tolls the vesper bell,
The house is provided well,
The table is for many laid.

Wandering ones, more than a few,
Come to the door on darksome courses.
Golden blooms the tree of graces
Drawing up the earths cool dew.

Wanderer quietly steps within;
Pain has turned the threshold to stone.
There lie, in limpid brightness shown,
Upon the table bread and wine.