Illustration of Flannery O'Connor

Flannery O’Connor’s Moments of Grace

Flannery O'Connor employed grotesqueness and violence in her stories to illustrate the workings of grace on her characters.
JSTOR Daily Friday Reads

A New Novel Explores Art Theft, History, and Child Refugees

Ellen Umansky's novel The Fortunate Ones explores the psychological fallout of the World War II Kindertransport, which moved child refugees to England.
JSTOR Daily Friday Reads

Elizabeth Bishop

Exploring the text and subtext of Elizabeth Bishop's poems, inspired by a new biography called Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast.
JSTOR Daily Friday Reads

Mary Shelley

Someone discovered a handful of previously unpublished letters written by Mary Shelley, stashed in private house in a small English village.
JSTOR Daily Friday Reads

A George Saunders Outtake

George Saunders' trademark dark humor is especially on display in this "deleted scene" from the novella Pastoralia, available for free here.
Herman Melville

Melville’s Confidence Man Today

Does Herman Melville's 1857 novel The Confidence-Man have anything to tell us about our present day? Philip Roth thinks so.
JSTOR Daily Friday Reads

Kathleen Collins and Black Women’s Sexuality

A new book is getting a lot of attention in the literary world right now…although its author died ...
JSTOR Daily Friday Reads

Zadie Smith

Ever since the publication of White Teeth, Zadie Smith has made a career of writing about the actual experiences behind topics like race and immigration.
Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison, the first African American writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, was born to working-class ...
JSTOR Daily Friday Reads

George Orwell’s 1984

George Orwell's dystopian novel 1984 finds itself at the top of the best-seller lists this week, the first of Trump's presidency.