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Middle-aged Women as Heroes in Crime Fiction and more…
What is speculative fiction? (Book Riot) Margaret Atwood writes in her book In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination that science fiction and speculative fiction are fluid terms. The worlds of science fiction and speculative fiction “don’t exist, and their non-existence is of a difference in order than the non-existence of the realistic novels.” Additionally, Atwood […]
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Crime Fiction, AI Writing Novels, Celebrity Book Clubs, and more…
Computers are learning to write, but could they ever produce a literary masterpiece? (ABC News) However, the idea that a novel could ever be written by a machine may still strike some as absurd, given the complexity involved. Language has long been regarded by some AI researchers as a “final frontier”. To readers who value […]
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Witches in Fiction, Imagining Palestine through Fiction, and more…
From Baba Yaga to Hermione Granger: why we’re spellbound by ‘witcherature’ (The Guardian) Since Trump’s election, which inspired mass spell-casting by thousands of “resistance witches” (the selection of judge Brett Kavanaugh for the supreme court also led to a mass “hex-in”), there has been a slew of novels, poetry collections and anthologies with witchcraft as their theme. […]
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Toni Morrison on the Necessity of Literature, and more…
In defence of ‘chick-lit’ (The Daily Star) These books (the good ones at least) offer more than just fluffy escape. In the absence of a challenging form and language, such stories offer enough comfort and optimism that the reader is able to absorb some strength from their characters. Camus’ Mersault may evoke a thought or […]
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Graphic Novel Satirizes Chicago Gentrification, and more…
The Novel That Accidentally Predicted the College-Admissions Scandal (Vanity Fair) The Gifted School is a novel set in Donald Trump’s America but not about Trump’s America—or at least not directly. It’s a novel about privilege, economic inequality, racial disparity, but also about ambition, friendship, and family, about the twinned challenges of parenting and growing up in a pressure-cooker environment […]
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Queer Literature, Black British Writers, and more…
What happened to Britain’s black avant-garde fiction writers? (Independent) Why did it take me so long to learn of Margaret Busby, who, 40 years after these figures, became the first black woman and youngest publisher in Britain, and whose recent New Daughters of Africa shows black women writers in Britain well before the arrival of the Windrush generation. […]
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Privacy in Sci-Fi, Historical Fiction Surging, and more…
Science Fiction’s Preoccupation With Privacy (The Atlantic) Two recent literary science-fiction novels, Pola Oloixarac’s Dark Constellations and Namwali Serpell’s, add the increasingly radical concept of privacy to Le Guin’s list. Oloixarac is Argentine and Serpell is Zambian, and both set their novel in their country of origin, creating post-colonial futures in which surveillance poses disturbing […]
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Fan-Fiction at the Hugo Awards and more…
In China, science fiction enjoys an efflorescence (The Hindu) Ironically, it is science fiction — a genre that is often dismissed as the plaything of nerds, geeks, and social misfits — that has actively imagined the consequences of technological changes. For the adherents of realism, or ‘serious literature’, science fiction is the literary equivalent of […]
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Black Women Comic Book Writers, Robot Writers, and more…
Comic book sheroes: A look at Chicago’s new wealth of black female comic book talent (Chicago Tribune) As more diverse creators enter the comics pool, more black women are coming into shops and inquiring especially about books written and drawn by other black women. Joshua Kelly, manager of Graham Crackers Comics in the Loop, has […]
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Remembering Andrea Levy, and more…
How 5 Authors Of Color Found Literary Agents Who Understood Their Stories (Bustle) People of color aren’t a monolith, and for industry professionals and authors of color to work well together, they don’t have to come from the same cultural or ethnic backgrounds. It can be tricky for aspiring authors of color to find an […]
Waking Writer 