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How to Dream the World You Want: Nnedi Okorafor and Jeff VanderMeer on Resistance and Transformation

Forget the new normal. What we need right now is literature that turns the whole concept of “normal” on its head, building worlds that put the status quo in the rearview mirror. Fantasy and sci-fi, once relegated to “niche” status in…
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Lager and Love Can’t Pay the Bills: 2020 Booker Prize Winner Douglas Stuart on his Masterpiece, Shuggie Bain

Douglas Stuart enraptured readers worldwide in 2020 when his heart-stopping debut novel, Shuggie Bain, took the world’s top literary award, the Booker Prize. While Stuart may have seemed like an overnight success, Shuggie Bain was a labor…
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Epicenter of Girlhood: Carol Edgarian and Vendela Vida on Coming of Age in San Francisco

From the Barbary Coast to the Summer of Love to the tech takeover, San Francisco has always been a city in flux, a writer’s dream, and a favorite setting for literature. Its boom-and-bust drama and breathtaking beauty also make it a perfect…
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Interior Chinatown, Tinseltown, and Other Worlds Imagined: Charles Yu on Showbiz and Storytelling, with Lodge 49’s Jim Gavin

When Trevor Noah of The Daily Show asked Charles Yu why he wrote his National Book Award-winning novel, the devastating “parable for outcasts” (Kirkus) Interior Chinatown, in the form of a screenplay, Yu deadpanned, “I work in Hollywood,…
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When Everything Falls Apart, How Does the Heart Survive? Orville Schell and Yiyun Li on China, Tolstoy, and the Power of Art, with Adam Hochschild

In a heartstopping scene from Orville Schell’s My Old Home, trained musician Li Tongshu sits at his piano, eyes closed, playing “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring,” as Red Guards storm his home. They’re there to arrest him as a bourgeois…
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Who Says Geniuses Can't Dance?

Newbery Medalist Meg Medina's new book, Merci Suárez Can't Dance (a Kirkus “Most Anticipated Book of 2021”), re-introduces us to her touching, funny titular character, now a seventh-grader. Joining her in conversation is celebrated author…
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The Committed: Viet Thanh Nguyen on Betrayal and Belonging

Viet Thanh Nguyen burst onto the literary scene with The Sympathizer, an "intelligent, relentlessly paced and savagely funny" (Wall Street Journal) debut novel that won 2016's Pulitzer Prize in fiction.  The world has been waiting ever since…
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Scottish dispatches: the new generation

This is a unique time to be thinking about and responding to Scottish identity, and the Edinburgh International Book Festival is proud to present an exciting selection of writers who are heralding a new generation of Scottish literature. In…
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From United Arab Emirates: Literary fiction – on the edge

Cutting-edge literary fiction has been set alight this year with some extraordinary debut novels published by exciting young authors. Join two trailblazers whose uncompromising work has entranced readers, reviewers and prize judges. Delve into…
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From Norway: Rediscoveries in life and literature

A true Bergener – both proud of and spiteful about his city – is author Tomas Espedal, who has written extensively about Bergen life and rain. Author Karl Ove Knausgård lived in Bergen for many years and will read from his latest novel…