Marlon James set his magnificent second novel, The Book of Night Women, on a Jamaican sugar plantation at the height of 18th century Caribbean slavery. The story centers on Lilith, one of several female slaves who plot to overthrow their masters and take over, and is told in a dialect that in other hands would be difficult but here somehow . . .
At Tin House, A.N. Devers makes the case for Hirai Taro, a Japanese writer who took a phonetic version of Edgar Allan Poe for his own pen name.
“Director: You’re ending this on a goddamn downer.” PEN America excerpts Saïd Sayrafiezadeh’s play, Autobiography of a Terrorist.
Katherine Lanpher remembers writer Bill Holm, a “great big tree of a man” who died recently and in whose memory 600 gathered on Tuesday night.
For her second novel(-in-progress), Amanda Stern must, “once again, shadow and tag my own emotional hollows.” Here’s her playlist.