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photo of the gazebo in the Boston Common during the autumn

Literary Boroughs #54: Boston, MA (Part Two)

The Literary Boroughs series will explore little-known and well-known literary communities across the country and world and show that while literary culture can exist online without regard to geographic location, it also continues to thrive locally. Part One of this post appeared earlier this week, as did a bonus Literary Borough walking tour of Beacon Hill by Emerson professor Megan…

statue

Literary Boston: Two Sides of Beacon Hill

Megan Marshall is the Pulitzer-nominated author of The Peabody Sisters and Margaret Fuller: A New American Life, and teaches nonfiction writing in the MFA program at Emerson College. She will be featured on two panels at AWP 2013, both on March 7: at 10:30, she will moderate “Sources of Inspiration,” with authors Matthew Pearl and Natalie Dykstra; and…

series of white footprints

“Bring Me Back”: A Playlist for George Saunders’ “Tenth of December”

The characters in Tenth of December, George Saunders’ newest collection of stories, struggle with maintaining innocence (and ultimately losing it) in a world that drives people further from each other; they struggle with doing good in a consumerist society.  These are flawed characters—people who make mistakes and are terrified to rectify them.  These are characters…

a Believe Boston glad in black and yellow color scheme

Literary Boroughs #54: Boston, MA (Part 1)

The Literary Boroughs series will explore little-known and well-known literary communities across the country and world and show that while literary culture can exist online without regard to geographic location, it also continues to thrive locally. Posts are by no means exhaustive and we encourage our readers to contribute in the comment section. The series will run on our blog…

Screenshot of a phone screen with the poem "The Man whose Pharynx was bad" by Wallace Stevens

Close Watching: Tech + Text = The Reading Paradigm of the Future?!

  When it comes to good ol’-fashioned reading, the influence of new-fangled technology is rarely construed as “positive.” A recent Pew Internet Study suggests our that our brains are being “rewired” for attention deficiency by nonstop, rapid-fire access to information. Adbusters’ Micah White accuses the Kindle of “mimicking the external traits of a book while destroying…