On Thursday, June 12, the Library of Congress announced that Charles Wright would be this year’s poet laureate. (In the United States, the poet laureate position lasts a year – sometimes two – and has few official duties other than overseeing a series of readings and lectures at the Library […]
From i09: Every now and then, a parent complains about their child being exposed to a science fiction book that contains challenging ideas or language — most notoriously, last year there was the whole kerfuffle over Ender’s Game. But the latest outcry is over what might be the most unexpected […]
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.