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Writers need to understand their role in the storytelling process, says bestselling author Martin Amis.

The Internet is a funny place. Humor is one the things it does best, which is why I was shocked, and ultimately disappointed, at the collective reaction to Joyce Carol Oates' recent tweet.

If Flannery O’Connor somehow birthed the love child of Sid Vicious, she might end up sounding like novelist Nell Zink. Equal parts Southern Gothic’s grotesquely twisted charm and punk and alternative music’s insiderish anti-establishmentism, Zink’s second novel Mislaid will disorient you until you let it delight you. Zink’s mix — which I’ll call Southern Gothic Punk — might be an acquired taste, but a taste well worth experiencing if only to break out of the contemporary rut of MFA-programed, sound-alike fiction that’s become the bubblegum pop of today’s literature.

“riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay,” begins James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, opening a torrent of words that has drowned many readers in confusion […]

New forms of writing will bring, as they always have, new ideas and new elements of creative genius.

One award was for a medical procedure that incapacitated thousands of people.

These hard-to-finish books are still worth the effort.

Books that were rarely taught in 1963, when baby boomers were students, became classics when those same boomers were teachers and parents.

The author of classics like "A Farewell to Arms" and "The Sun Also Rises" is known and loved for his simple yet effective writing style. Here’s how to imitate it.

Famished, not famous: retrace Orwell’s hunger days, when he was one of the city’s legion of poor foreigners.

Tusks suddenly became a liability, even though in natural circumstances, tusks are very useful.

A tourist generally has an eye for the things that have become almost invisible to the resident.

New research compares the roles and political clout of royal women in eight societies spanning five continents and more than 4,000 years.

The Canadian professor calls for personal responsibility over legislation.

Explore McLuhan's theory on print culture and its influential hold over civilization.

The history and reasoning behind the much-maligned Electoral College.

Tolstoy is the sort of author that requires deep reading for full appreciation. If you don't have the time for that, there's always the War and Peace quick-read strategy.

Stephanie Herseth Sandlin was able to ride a wave confidence to run for Congress through the support of her friends and family. Perhaps to stop underestimating ourselves, we need to find our own confidence boosters — in our lives or online.

The Woman in White is a Victorian mystery novel containing a "songline" of a chance slice of London.

An English teacher explains why parents who want their kids to love reading need to let them choose their own books.

The children of helicopter parents are finally off to college. Unfortunately, mom and dad aren't staying home. Colleges and universities are having to deal with the nuisance of overbearing parents keeping constant tabs on their adult kids.

Neil deGrasse Tyson snapped this photograph of the Mahattanhenge, an event that occurs twice a year when the city’s grid takes on the special effects of Stonehenge. This Saturday, if […]

The wreck of the General Slocum in 1904 broke the spirit of Manhattan's German enclave

“I leave you with four words: I’m glad Reagan dead,” Mike “Killer Mike” Render rapped in his song “Reagan” off the 2012 album R.A.P. Music. His harsh, inflammatory statements drew […]

Writers and historians enjoy making the case for one or another thinker as the starting point for an epoch. Did Galileo launch the scientific revolution? Or was it Copernicus? Or […]

I’m a little wary of defending The Great Gatsby. Not because I’m wary of the book, which I’ve loved with a passion since age sixteen, but because I can’t speak […]

In the spirit of maintaining an open mind, and in an attempt to purge myself of past prejudices, I will be re-reading The Great Gatsby this weekend.   

After her uterus nearly erupted, Vyckie Garrison was rushed to the hospital to give birth to her seventh child. The emergency caesarean section nearly killed her. Her doctor warned the […]

Nothing hurts like a blown call. Baseball’s bittersweet beauty owes much to moments such as Umpire Jim Joyce’s missing a call to rob Detroit Tigers’ pitcher Armando Galarraga of a […]

One important purpose of literature has always been to allow us to safely test our moral fibres against the grain of hardened anathemas: killing, adultery, incest, pornography, theft, anarchy have […]