Blog

5 under 35

C.E. Morgan, Josh Weil, Karen Russell, Lydia Peelle, and Ceridwen Dovey are the year’s 5 under 35 honorees.

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At Granta

John Freeman, who recently published Maria Venegas’ Bullet Proof Vest, has been named editor of Granta.

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The Depression, diphtheria, and my mom’s half-sister

According to her death certificate, my mother’s half-sister Bonnie died of diphtheria — “the deadly scourge of childhood” — at five years old, in a town not too far from Dallas. An aggressive vaccination campaign began in the region around the same time, but perhaps it took a while for word to reach the provinces, or maybe traveling for the . . .

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On A.S. Byatt’s The Children’s Book

In the London Review of Books this week, James Wood adjudged A.S. Byatt “a very ordinary grown-ups’ writer and a very good children’s writer” — a verdict which, notwithstanding her lapses into didacticism, I find ludicrous. My review of Byatt’s latest novel, The Children’s Book, is at Barnes & Noble Review today. An excerpt: A.S. Byatt published her first novel . . .

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