It’s April, which has been declared National Poetry Month; a celebration of poetry created in 1996 by the Academy of American Poets as a way to increase awareness and appreciation of poetry in the United States. I’m not a poetry aficionado; much of it is way over my head. But […]
Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances Neil Gaiman William Morrow Publishers Publication Date: ISBN 978-0-06-233026-0 I freely admit it: for me (as for many), Neil Gaiman can do no wrong. He’s the perfect literary celebrity: moved from the UK to live and work in my Midwestern neck of the woods, […]
Recently, I’ve started helping out at LitStack with their new “Literary Birthday” feature, where from Monday – Friday, a small blurb announces a little something about a writer whose birthday occurs on that day. It’s been fun doing a tiny bit of research on lots of authors, poets, journalists, and […]
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.