From the cover of The Yardbird Reader, Vol. 5

Exploring the Yardbird Reader

Initiated under the editorial directorship of Ishmael Reed, Yardbird made room in publishing for marginalized artists from many walks of life.
The Penguin logo on the cover of a paperback in 1944

But Why a Penguin?

Penguin Books built on an already strong tradition of branding through cute mascot “media stars” when they introduced their cartoon bird in 1935.
Actors on stage during a performance of A Midsummer Night 's Dream

Shakespeare and Fanfiction

Despite an enduring slice of audience that treats his work as precious and mythic, most Shakespeare fans have rarely met an adaptive concept they didn’t like.
Garrett Hongo

I Hear America Singing

Japanese American poet Garrett Hongo is a guiding spirit to a glorious cacophony, an exuberant collective thrum made of different tongues and peoples.
Hand drawn illustration of african woman with pink hair

Going “Black to the Future”

How has Afrofuturism supported the imagining of other worlds in the face of the anthropogenic climate crisis?

A Garden of Verses

As commonplace books evolved into anthologies, they developed reputations as canonical works, their editors curating tomes as vibrant as the loveliest bouquets.
Art Nouveau image of a person looking at a book of poetry, 1898 Velhagen Monatsheft

Make Your Own Poetry Anthology

Teaching students to make their own poetry anthologies in the form of a commonplace book gives them insight into the power, and problems, of curation.
The covers of Bamboo Among the Oaks: Contemporary Writing by Hmong Americans and How do I Begin?: A Hmong American Literary Anthology

Searching for Home in Hmong American Writing

Two significant poetry anthologies deterritorialize home, showing that for Hmong Americans, home can be a process of moving and running despite living in a place.
Embroidery of a ginger cat with a mouse on a chequered floor made by Mary, Queen of Scots

Prisoners’ Pastimes

Isabella Rosner’s Stitching Freedom showcases embroidered works made by the incarcerated and examines this craft’s historical popularity behind bars.
One knight consoling another knight on the ground

The Swooning Knights of Medieval Stories

In romantic literature of the fourteenth and fifteen centuries, fainting wasn’t just for ladies.