In the New York Review of Books, Pinckney discusses “how much about race immigration is,” and wonders “is there a distinction between xenophobia and racism?”

McCraney reveals what Oprah said to him when she woke him up with a phone call, and talks about what gave him “permission to talk to God.” 

The Post remarks on the many ways one can read McDermott’s new novel – as love story, Gothic tale, or Greek tragedy – and calls the book “superb and masterful.” 

McDermott is a finalist for her novel The Ninth Hour, about a young Irish immigrant determined to prove himself. The prize honors books have received a starred review from Kirkus Reviews over the past year. 

Smith began her service with an opening lecture at the Thomas Jefferson building, where she read selections from her three collections. She remarked that she was eager to travel and see “what poems speak to that is relevant to lives in other places.” 

The Tribune writes that the collection “collapses the distance between a word and an action,” and says that the work is “incisively intelligent and emotionally resonant.”

The literary award honors “the power of literature to promote peace, justice, and global understanding.” The Underground Railroad is a finalist for the fiction prize. 

Chiasson reflects, in the New Yorker, on the poet’s decades-long career, writing “Merwin’s asceticism has always had about it the prowess of a sophisticate."

The horror novel about social media and voyeurism “subverts expectations,” Ars Technica writes, declaring LaValle’s latest, “the perfect reimagining of the Brothers Grimm or Hans Christian Andersen for the modern oversharing era.”

Thompson explores James Baldwin’s declaration that he was a blues singer, and delves into the ways that Baldwin brought the “beat of the blues” back to the written word.