Once more, we sent our intern out into the world with only a clipboard
and pen to confront the people of New York City. This week we saw they
can tell the difference between a line of one e.e. cummings and Ke$ha. The two might just have more in common than
you think.
Need to know which George Saunders book to read next? Black Balloon has you covered. What follows is the order in which I would save his four short story collections from a burning building, though I swear to you I would gladly burn my delicate, immaculately maintained hands on each and every one of them.
Read MoreIf brevity is truly the soul of wit, then your Twitter feed is the Algonquin round table of today's digital Dorothy Parkers and Ogden Nashes. Here's a selection of our favorite tweets from the week; nominate yours by submitting to @blackballoonpub with #twitwit.
Read MoreAll three of the Chilean writer Alejandro Zambra’s books in translation, including the latest, Ways of Going Home, are short enough to read in single bites. Join me as I pair each book with some choice reading spots.
Read MoreWelcome to Clementine’s Weekly Reading Series, where Clem the hedgehog talks about whatever she is currently reading. This week: Tenth of December by George Saunders.
Read MoreEveryone from Galileo to Jim Morrison to countless Scrabble wordsmiths have played around with letters to form their perfect anagrams. We take literary-minded words and anagram them to find ... well, that's up to you. A deeper meaning? A hidden truth? Or just a happy coincidence?
Read MoreMeredith Ries, a set designer in her final year at the Yale School of Drama, is writing about her design process for Hamlet at the Yale Repertory Theater, opening this spring. Today, a tale of triumphant design meetings and the dark, looming clouds of budgeting — a tale she calls In the Red.
Read MoreA weekly series that celebrates everyone’s favorite part of the author
reading: the Q&A. This week, short story writer George Saunders explains why we need a new definition of the word "novel."
Minimalist
writers are everywhere. They write the blogs you peruse, the copy on your cereal box and, of course, the pithy tweets you glance over every morning. Let's look at their pre-social media forebears — from Sappho to Bukowski — and imagine what their Twitter accounts would look like.
In this new series, Julia Langbein describes a book that does not exist: a book based on a recent curiosity from the real world; a book that, ideally, you will write. Today, she urges you to immortalize the uniquely American story of a quasi-Italian dish reconstructed in smalltown Wisconsin and marketed as the choice of noose-bound cowboys.
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