Books
Book reviewers explain it all, Part 1: What's the purpose of book reviews?
Last week I had a short and soft lead-in for this week’s column, and because this subject has really been on my mind a lot lately, I want to introduce it again. It used to be that when I thought of book reviews, they were just something that magically appeared. They showed up in print, or online, hailing from the brain of all-knowing giants whose main purpose in life is telling the masses what books to read, or what books to stay away from. I imagined that the book review business as whole held authors to a social standard—a line that was dictated by the canon and always obeyed. However, as I got older and closer and closer to the literary world (I still have a long way to go), it occurred to me that I was totally wrong.MORE »
Katherine Boo, in Minneapolis, tells harrowing stories of a Mumbai undercity
Reporting results to funders is a challenge every nonprofit faces. "We gave you $50,000 last year. How can you prove the world is a better place this year?" It's particularly a challenge, though, for nonprofit journalism enterprises like the Twin Cities Daily Planet. An organization like Feed My Starving Children can tell you exactly how many starving children they fed with your money. What can we report? We can report the number of stories we told.MORE »
THURSDAY PICK | Brenda Child's new book "Holding Our World Together" under discussion
University of Minnesota's own Brenda Child's newest work Holding Our World Together: Ojibwe Women and the Survival of Community is the latest addition to the Penguin Library of American Indian History. Her book is described as "a powerful tribute to the many courageous women who sustained Native communities through the darkest challenges of the last three centuries." A member of the Red Lake Ojibwe Nation and associate professor at the U of M with a specialty in American Indian history, Child has a strong grasp of the topic, to say the least. Tonight's discussion at the U of M's bookstore will be thought provoking indeed.MORE »
MONDAY PICK | Katherine Boo brings "Behind the Beautiful Forevers" to Magers & Quinn
Katherine Boo, staff writer and The New Yorker and winner of a Pulitzer Prize, is one of the country's most acclaimed nonfiction writers. She'll be at Magers & Quinn on February 20 to present her new book Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity. Though Boo grew up in the D.C. area, her family has Minnesota roots: her father Dick Boo taught at St. Thomas College with Eugene McCarthy, and moved to Washington to serve on McCarthy's staff when he went to Congress.MORE »
Reviewing books: How is it done?
There’s something about book reviewing that seems so easy. When I first stood across the Spyhouse Nicollet counter from Jay Gabler in December of ’09 and said, “Yeah, I write. How about some book reviews?” I was sure as hell that after writing countless criticisms and papers on books in college it was going to be the easiest thing I would ever do. But then I finished reading my solicited review copy of Hospital for Bad Poets by J.C. Hallman (Milkweed Editions), which had been nominated in 2010 for a Minnesota Book Award, and I just couldn’t do it. (Seriously though, I still haven’t written the review, and no, what I’m about to write doesn’t count.)MORE »
TUESDAY PICK | This Valentine's Day, try Erotica Slam
Poetry SlamMN's Erotica Slam is in its 17th year of unholy matrimony, and this year comes with a bonus night on Valentine's Day at Kieran's. The featured poet of the evening is Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz, but audience members are encouraged to bring their own three-minute poem to compete as well. The night is promised to be filled with "poetry that will make you squirm, squish, and simmer" in case you weren't already hot and bothered enough already.MORE »
MONDAY PICK | What is Black Art Jeopardy! registration deadline?
Answer: The mandatory to-do before competing in historical trivia pertaining to artists and cultural icons recognized in the second month of the year. Black History Month meets the sport of trivia in Black Art Jeopardy! at the Hosmer Public Library. The categories are a potpourri of Black Poets, African American Novels, Black Playwrights, Black Muralists, Black Women Visual Artists, and Black Photographers. The registration deadline is Wednesday, Feb. 15 and the event is Thursday, Feb. 23. Now that you have the topics, it's time to hit the Google searches.MORE »
MN VOICES | From Korea to Minnesota and back: Kelly Fern shares her remarkable double-adoption story
The more you learn about Kelly Fern, the more you want to know. Not only does she tell a moving personal story of being adopted from Korea at age five, she reveals that on the flight to America, her identity was accidentally switched with that of another young adoptee—a circumstance that ultimately resulted in her family adopting three Korean girls, not just the two sisters they'd expected. Further, Fern herself had a child who she gave up for adoption. In the space of less than a year, Fern recently reconnected with both her biological family in Korea and her biological daughter in Minnesota. By this point, you may be thinking Fern should write a book—and, in fact, she has.MORE »
Off to AWP: Tips from The Loft for managing the madness
It’s February. Do you know what that means? The Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) conference is right around the corner! That’s right, four whole days and nights of passing out your business card to people you hope won’t be offended if you consider them your peers, and Googling images of your favorite writers to make sure that yes, that’s them at that booth over there!MORE »
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