Robin Hobb

Speculative Fiction Sucker Punches, Part 3 – Upper Cuts, Body Punches and Haymakers

So we’ve covered convenient magic and uber leetness as speculative fiction sucker punches; the right hook and left hook, respectively. Now we’re going to bring it on home. A strong corollary to the uber heroine is the female character written by a man who is clueless about women. So many good […]

LitStaff Pick: Our Favorite Unlikely Heroes

Joseph Campbell had a theory about heroes. In his classic seminal work, The Hero With a Thousand Faces, Campbell discusses the journey of the archetypal hero found in world mythologies. The hero, according to Campbell follows the same path or, ‘heroic journey’ : A hero ventures forth from the world […]

Literary Pin-Up Calendar from The Tinker’s Pack

For The Tinker’s Pack 2013 calendar, the not-for-profit organization founded by Patrick Rothfuss, has teamed up with some of the best authors in the fantasy genre: Peter S. Beagle, Ray Bradbury, Patricia Briggs, Jim Butcher, Jacqueline Carey, Neil Gaiman, Charlaine Harris, Robin Hobb, N.K. Jemisin, George R. R. Martin, Terry […]

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.