All’s fair in lit and war. At the Los Angeles Review of Books, Kayla Williams disputes the assertion that all war literature is written by men, providing a heavy-hitting list of contemporary war literature penned by female authors to prove her point (P.S. Here’s how not to review women’s writing). Here’s North Korea‘s former poet-laureate-turned-defector Jang Jin Sung in conversation about poetry and politics. Twenty-five years after the Tiananmen Square crackdown, artists in China still face imprisonment by engaging in civil (artistic) disobedience (by the way, here’s a great piece commemorating the landmark protest). And finally, remembering slain Iranian-American singer and writer Ali Eskandarian as a punk Beat novelist. READ MORE…

Hard to believe we’re approaching the end of May—only a month until summer’s official starting date. Still, spring is springing: read Karl Ove Knausgaard’s greatest sign of spring. And while we’re on the topic of the Norwegian sensation: some love him. Others just don’t get the hype.  READ MORE…

Beware, multilingual pedagogues: your job may be outsourced soon—to a robot. Robots are now check-out-able at the Chicago Public Library—be sure to pick one up alongside your non-electronic devices. (Perhaps you can check out the world’s smallest comic strip, etched on a piece of human hair, one day). Interesting timing on this one, in light of the (totally obvious) discovery that active, engaged learning consistently beats passive learning methods. READ MORE…

You can hear the cheers from here! After widespread outcry and a petition with signatures from the likes of Tom Stoppard, Jonathan Lethem, Salman Rushdie, Susan Bernofsky, and Annie Proulx, the New York Public Library has squashed its plans to do away with the book stacks in its 42nd Street edifice.  If you’re outside the New York area, chances are you can still partake in the Worldwide Library, which is finally going digital—not without a hitch, however. READ MORE…