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LitStack Review: The Race by Nina Allen

The Race Nina Allen Titan Books Release Date: July 19, 2016 ISBN 978-1-785650-36-9 Originally published in 2014 by NewCon Press and rereleased in 2016 by Titan Books, Nina Allen’s novel The Race is hard to describe – but wonderful to read. On the surface, the five sections of the book […]

LitStack Review: ‘American Elsewhere’ by Robert Jackson Bennett

American Elsewhere Robert Jackson Bennett Orbit First Edition: February 12, 2013 ISBN 978-0-316-20020-2 Remember “Twin Peaks”, the strange and wonderful television series that ran from 1990 – 1991? Remember how it seemed like you were in a beautiful, rustic Washington state setting, filled with beautiful, rustic people living typical American […]

Birthdays

On this day, April 16, in 1972, Tracy K. Smith was born in Falmouth, Massachusetts. Her father was an engineer who worked on NASA’s Hubble space telescope, and she wrote her 2011 volume of poetry, Life on Mars, as a tribute to his work – that collection went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 2012. In 2014 she was awarded the Academy of American Poets fellowship, and her 2015 memoir, Ordinary Light, was a finalist for the National Book Award in nonfiction. From 2017 to 2019 she served as the 22nd Poet Laureate of the United States, and in 2018 she began hosting the podcast and radio program The Slowdown, sponsored by the Poetry Foundation. Today, she turns 49.

Birthdays

On this day, December 3, in 1857, Joseph Conrad was born in Berdichev, Imperial Russia (modern
Ukraine, then a part of Poland). While he settled in England and wrote in English, he always considered himself a Pole. Heart of Darkness, one of the most famous of his 20 novels (which explores colonialism and the attitudes regarding what constitutes a barbarian versus civilized society) is considered one of the best English novels of the 20th century, as is his novel Lord Jim, which chronicles a crew’s abandonment of its disabled ship. Conrad died in England in 1924 at age 66.