For your reading pleasure, Longform has rounded up all the finalists for the 2013 National Magazine Awards in the categories of Features, Reporting, Public Interest, and Essays and Criticism.
At the New York Review of Books, Robert Darnton writes about the intellectual underpinnings of the Digital Public Library of America: “a project to make the holdings of America’s research libraries, archives, and museums available to all Americans—and eventually to everyone in the world.” The Library is set to launch on April 18.
In anticipation of Junot Diaz’s upcoming reading at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, organizers have commissioned a comic adaptation of Diaz’s short story “Miss Lora,” which just won the Sunday Times Short Story Award.
The centerpiece of the latest issue of The Baffler is a 16,000-word salvo by Bookforum contributor Evgeny Morozov about the pernicious techno-utopianism of O'Reilly Media founder Tim O'Reilly.
During a recent reading in Austin, Texas, George Saunders told the audience: "I texted a cousin of mine who was coming with her kids (one of whom is in high school) just to let her know there was some rough language. Afterwards she said she didn’t mind fu*k, but hated—wait for it—moist. Said it made her a little physically ill." Why do we react strongly to some words and not to others? Slate investigates the curious phenomenon of word aversion.
