Pulitzer

Litstack Recs: The Refugees & All the Light We Cannot See

The Refugees: Stories, by Viet Thanh Nguyen In celebration of #ShortStoryMonth, this week’s rec looks at another great story collection I’ve read and recommended this year. Fans of The Sympathizer, Nguyen’s debut novel that won the Pulitzer Prize in 2016, will find much of what they loved in the author’s […]

LitStack Review: Life on Mars by Tracy K. Smith

Life on Mars Tracy K. Smith Graywolf Press Release Date: January 1, 2011 ISBN 978-1-55597-584-5 I’ll admit it – I often have problems reading poetry. Don’t get me wrong. I love poetry, or at least the idea of poetry. It’s an idiom that is unique, that uses the look and […]

Birthdays

On this day, April 13, in 1909, was born in Jackson, Mississippi. Author of over forty short stories, five novels, three works of nonfiction, and one children’s book, she was awarded a Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Award and numerous O. Henry Awards, and was honored with a Presidential Medal of Freedom, a National Medal of Arts, the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, as well as being named a Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur by the French government. Her works captured the quintessential Southern voice with an emphasis on family and customs, with a strong sense of place. She died from natural causes in 2001; she was 92.

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.