April Joyner

English PEN is partnering with Sotheby’s to auction off first-edition copies of notable books annotated by their authors (or, in two cases, their illustrators). What a cool idea! I wish this could be in a museum somewhere.

(Source: ft.com)

Is this another manifestation of sexism in tech?

(The community of Wikipedia editors and contributors skews heavily male, just as in tech at large.)

Natasha Trethewey, the new U.S. poet laureate

I sat in a lecture on memory of the Civil War in the Civil Rights Movement this past weekend during my fifth-year college reunion. Another post to come: some interesting things went down.

Bonus: interviews with Trethewey here and here (h/t: thesmithian)

From an eight-year-old boy’s letter to Maurice Sendak, author and illustrator, who died earlier today

The first poet I ever admired. Happy birthday!

fsgbooks:

“Good morning, Revolution:
You’re the very best friend
I ever had.
We gonna pal around together from now on.”

Happy Birthday to Langston Hughes, born February 1st, 1902.

I would have to concur with Anna Quindlen, who in her introduction to a 2007 edition of A Wrinkle in Time noted, “The truth is, I’m not a fan of science fiction, and my math and physics gene has always been weak.” Yet like her, I love A Wrinkle in Time; I also thoroughly enjoyed A Wind in the Door and A Swiftly Tilting Planet, two of the book’s sequels. There’s nothing inherently masculine (or white—another issue) about science fiction: I remember hearing Nalo Hopkinson, in a talk at Yale (sadly, I can’t find a video to link to), argue that it was a powerful genre for writers like her precisely because it is devoted to imagining alternate realities. Yet the genre is still marketed and presented as one chiefly, if not exclusively, for (white) guys. Huh.