Blog



Nabokov’s The Original of Laura as performance art?

Vladimir Nabokov famously instructed his wife Vera to destroy his final, unfinished novel, The Original of Laura, if he didn’t live to complete it. At his death, the draft consisted of a stack of notecards which he’d shuffled through, added to, and rewritten right up until the end. Vera, having once saved an early version of Lolita from the incinerator, . . .

Read more



Dolen Perkins-Valdez at Girls Write Now’s Chapters

The first installment of Chapters, the Girls Write Now reading series I’m curating, will feature the talented Dolen Perkins-Valdez, author of the new novel Wench. She’ll be introduced by my friend and fellow board member Tayari Jones, and after her guest reading, several of the girls will share their own work. The event is this Friday at the Center for . . .

Read more




Newsletter Signup

For regular updates, subscribe to my free newsletter.

Newsletter

You might want to subscribe to my free Substack newsletter, Ancestor Trouble, if the name makes intuitive sense to you.