Rozina Ali profiles the Iranian American poet Solmaz Sharif, author of the collections Look and Customs, for Lux magazine. “One of the oft-repeated misconceptions of Sharif as a political poet is that she is not as concerned about aesthetics as she is about the message,” Ali writes. “She rejects this. For Sharif, language and liberation are tied, but if that was all there was to her work, she told me, she would have been an orator.”
Words Without Borders has launched their redesigned and reconceived website, with contributions from Jhumpa Lahiri, Michael F. Moore, and Olga Tocarkzuk. The editors note in a letter that Words Without Borders “is embracing its identity as a truly digital publication. In place of monthly themes and features, WWB will now publish new content daily, presenting a mix of fiction, essays, reportage, poetry, criticism, and interviews about the most exhilarating writing around the world.”
For the New Yorker, Garth Greenwell writes about The Kingdom of Sand, Andrew Holleran’s latest novel, and the writer’s previous books: “Holleran’s most successful novels take a particular period—six indistinguishable years in ‘Dancer,’ a semester in his 2006 novel, ‘Grief’—and bottle it, tilting it this way and that, letting time drift and double back. In a novel, exposition typically supplements scene, but Holleran inverts that hierarchy.”
On Tuesday, June 14th, Bookforum presents “Off the Page: Margo Jefferson in conversation with Blair McClendon,” the first episode of a live conversation series. McClendon wrote about Jefferson’s memoir Constructing a Nervous System for our spring issue. You can get free tickets to this virtual event by RSVPing here.
At Vulture, a roundup of new comedy books. Titles by Bob Odenkirk, David Sedaris, Melissa Rivers, Judd Apatow, and the anthology, Eating Salad Drunk: Haikus for the Burnout Age by Comedy Greats, all promise a few laughs.