Author Jesse Lee Kercheval has passed along some recommendations for Ukrainian literature in translation. In an interview with the New York Times, the Ukrainian comic novelist Andrey Kurkov suggests Maria Matios’s novel Sweet Darusya. The American Society of Magazine Editors has named the finalists for its 2022 awards. Among the writers and stories honored are Imani Perry for her feature on Gayl Jones, E. Alex Jung for his profile of the late Anthony Veasna So, Angelica Jade Bastién for three pieces of film criticism published by New York magazine, and Carina del Valle Schorske for her essay on dancing during the pandemic.
Poets and readers are sharing Ukrainian-born poet Ilya Kaminsky’s “We Lived Happily During the War” on Twitter, and weighing in on what people are turning to it for. Danez Smith writes, “I hope it’s as a warning/critique and not as a salve/answer. . . . We should look to it to unsettle us, not to bring calm and resolution.” At LitHub, Jonny Diamond directs readers to Pádraig Ó Tuama’s close reading of the poem for Krista Tippett’s On Being podcast.
For New York magazine’s Intelligencer, Sam Adler-Bell profiles David Leonhardt, who writes the New York Times’s “The Morning” newsletter. Leonhardt has recently been using the platform as a corrective to what he calls a “bad-news bias” regarding COVID-19, and spreading a message that the worst of the pandemic is behind us, drawing sharp criticism from readers who consider this position premature given the continued threat the virus poses to immunocompromised and unvaccinated Americans. “Lately,” Adler-Bell writes, “Leonhardt has served as a sort of Rorschach test for liberal America.”
The dates for this year’s Brooklyn Book Festival have been announced. The festival will begin with a virtual launch on September 25, and will culminate on October 2 with the in-person festival day and literary marketplace in downtown Brooklyn. Live and virtual programming with authors will be offered throughout the nine-day celebration.