In our Roundups segment, we’re looking back at all the great posts since the blog started in 2009. We explore posts from our archives as well as other top literary magazines and websites, centered on a certain theme to help you jump-start your week.
Summer has finally arrived, so start making your travel plans. Intending to do some literary-themed vacations or road trips this year? Here’s a list of places where you can get your bookshopping, writing inspiration, and literary geekiness on:
From Ploughshares:
A while back we did a “Literary Boroughs” series of book-ish and book-y places around the US and the globe. Here are some destinations (in the form of a helpful itinerary):
Since Ploughshares is based in Boston, we’ll start off with our lovely Beantown’s rich literary history (in two parts here and here!).
Head down to Baltimore, the self-named “The City That Reads,” tour its many bookstores, and brush up on your Poe history.
Fly out to Denver, where there are some great book events and nonprofit writing centers.
Head up to Portland and visit Powell’s, home to over a million used and new books.
End your trip in Seattle spending time writing at the many (many!) coffeeshops.
In my last post, I wrote about the Lonesome Dove Problem—i.e., my lifelong struggle to find a girthy novel as totally absorbing as Larry McMurtry’s masterpiece—and attempted to identify some common denominators shared by Lonesome Dove and a few other totally absorbing novels, so that I might be better equipped to analyze future selections based…
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…
At the end of 2009, I was hunched in the passenger seat of a van, weeping down a midwest interstate. We’d just recorded an album with a Grammy-winning producer, paying for it with months of fan-funding hype. And we were touring to promote it, planning to release it ASAP, when seven years of full-time music-ing…