The poetry prize was awarded to Patricia Smith, whose collection "Incendiary Art: Poems" examines maternal grief and the brutal murder of Emmett Till.
Smith thanked her father, who was part of the Great Migration from Arkansas to Chicago, for teaching her "the tradition of the back porch." Read more here.
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Make room on your to-be-read list. On Thursday, PEN America announced its lists of finalists for the 2018 PEN Literary Awards.
Each year, the PEN Literary Awards honors great new literature in fiction and a wide array of non-fiction, including sports writing, science writing, essays, and more. Past winners have included Matthew Desmond's deep dive into eviction practices in the U.S. Evicted and Helen Oyeyemi's fable-inspired short story collection What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours (which was also a MashReads favorite). Read more...
Read MoreCarrie Mae Weems ended her year-long residency at the Park Avenue Armory on Sunday by asking a group of like-minded artists, scholars, and creators to spend the day contemplating violence and healing. She called the 10-hour event “The Shape of Things,” taken from the title of a 1993 photograph she took in Mali.
The impressive Gilded-age space is itself saturated with symbols that glorify 19th-century state-sanctioned violence, serving as a powerful backdrop for an event where most presentations addressed crimes against black and brown bodies.
Read MoreHere’s a sequel I’ve been very excited to read: Daniel José Older’s Shadowhouse Fall! Following up on the smash hit, Shadowshaper, the sequel returns to Brooklyn and its band of unlikely teen ‘‘urban sorcerers’’ in yet another exciting thriller that tackles both the prevailing social issues of our time and some dark monsters intent on nefarious deeds. Everything Older excelled at in the first book is back and then some, with plenty of righteous teen anger blended into a larger story about, well, the future of the world. Most importantly, protagonist Sierra continues to be a perfect combination of power and pathos, as she leads the members of Shadowhouse into the fight of their lives and a new chapter in this ongoing series. Read more.
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