The public library is in the unique position to pick up where public education leaves off—to succeed where public education fails. It’s time we start rethinking what a library can be.
What do we do with unthinkable thoughts in the time of covid? Plus: how crime fiction enables police brutality, zines and self-discovery, celebrating the Clueless anniversary, every book you’ll want to read for the next five months and more.
The problem with new anti-racist book clubs, 50 Black-owned bookstores to support, writing good sex scenes and more.
Narratives of violence and abuse are so familiar in our history and culture that we hardly notice them. Corinne Manning shares what it took to notice and transform these narratives in their own fiction and their story collection, We Had No Rules.
Is there a difference between drive and fear? Where are the abortion memoirs? What fall books should you definitely read?
Why likability is a lie, a new edition of Colonize This!, the publisher reissuing queer genre fiction from the 60s to 90s, abandoning books and more.
Writing and money, machines learning from our texts (and replicating our power structures), whether books are clutter and more.
Getting real about the financial realities of writing, creative forces of subculture, K-pop, the branded ephemera of Frida Khalo, and shedding books to survive academia.
A website that generates short stories based on phone numbers, the feminist Western, financially sustaining a creative life, books to read before “The L Word” comes back, and more.
“Why are we so quick to conclude that marginalized writers’ work is autobiographical?” Plus books about love triangles, a secret lesbian code, why you need to start writing letters to trans people in prison and more.
Still mourning Mary Oliver. Plus why “books” are not a personality, the mood of reading, feminist bookstores to support right now and more.
A humble argument for not counting how many books you read. Plus: Lin-Manuel Miranda saved a bookstore, Mari Kondo doesn’t actually want you to get rid of all your books, and more.
The creative process, insomnia, books to read in 2019 and more.
Finding queer southern lit, how the queer writers of the ’60s and ’70s shape Patrisse Cullors’s political work, the best of 2018 book lists and more.
The word of the year, the curiosity crisis in schools, the art of seeing, and more.
Limiting access to books in prisons is bad for everyone, what happens when you wreck a library book, the best time to write, and more!
In August, Book Riot published a list of the Best Books Set In Every State, and I thought to myself, as I so often do, “What if we did a list like this, but for queer women?”
A literature of women’s madness, witchy books to read right now, why buying books won’t save independent bookstores and more.
Loving unlikable women in literature, talking about horror, new poetry by Ursula K. Le Guin, how to start making zines, and more.
How feminist bookstores changed history, why public libraries are getting less classist, mental models for queerness and more.
