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In April 1716 Mary Wortley Montagu’s husband was appointed Ambassador Extraordinary to the court of Turkey. She and her family arrived in Adrianapole in March of the next year only to receive word from England that he was to return in September....

Still searching for a way to support himself entirely with his writing in 1925, Hart Crane showed up at the farm that poet Allan Tate shared with novelist Caroline Gordon. In between drinking bouts and various other assorted indulgences, Crane set...

Ethics for the New Millennium is a book of practical secular ethics for life. Written by the 14th Dalai Lama, it was published in 2011. This book is designed to be applicable to any person who picks it up, whether they are religious or not. In...

Gandhi: Selected Political Writing is the collection of Mahatma Gandhi’s work. Gandhi was a political leader of India, who led the freedom movement till independence was achieved by that country. His non-violent means of achieving his goals...

Born in Lincoln, Nebraska, Kevin Young is one of the most interesting poets to come out of the United States of America in recent times. Citing influences as varied as the Harlem Renaissance writer Langston Hughes, Emily Dickinson and the artist...

Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror is the title of both the anchor poem and the collection in which it is found. The title poem was inspired by references the painting of the same name by Renaissance artist Francesco Mazzola. The collection pulled...

“Some Trees” is a poem that John Ashbery wrote and then published in 1956. The subject seems to be about trees, as the title suggests, but the meanings of those trees go much deeper than the plants alone. The trees can also actually be a metaphor...

Dictee is a 1982 novel by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, a South Korean-American author. It is considered her best, most prominent work, focusing on the experiences of specific iconic, powerful women over the years, as well as a more personal part delving...

Derek Walcott published his collection Midsummer in 1984. The collection is a sequence consisting of 54 poems, one for each year of his life at the time of publication. The title references the narrative conceit of the novel: a poetic examination...

The Arrivants was written by award-winning author Edward Kamau Brathwaite. This creative work explores the implications of black life in the modern world. More specifically, it's a poetic trilogy that highlights the natural beauty and wealth of...

Pushing the boundaries of poetic expression, Zong! transcends the limitations of conventional archives and verses, immersing readers in a profound and captivating exploration of the past. Authored by the accomplished Canadian writer M. NourbeSe...

Flowering Judas, and Other Stories is Katherine Anne Porter’s first collection of published short stories, originally released in 1930 and then revised with the addition of a few new stories five years later. Since that initial publication, one of...

The Difference Engine is a 1990 novel by both William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. It is an "alternative history" book, and is notable for how it pioneered and helped establish the steampunk genre. The novel was nominated for a number of awards,...

Tom Rob Smith is an English novelist born in South London, England in 1979. He graduated from St John’s College in 2001 and subsequently studied creative writing at Parvin University in Italy. Before publishing his debut novel, Child 44, Smith...

One of the most respected American writers of the twentieth century, Elizabeth Bishop (1911 – 1979) is predominantly known as a poet. She won the Pulitzer Prize in 1956 for her poetry collection Cold Springs, and the National Book Award in 1970...

Born in 1952 in Puerto Rico, Judith Ortiz Cofer would go on to become a renowned writer, whose work spanned numerous genres. After her family immigrated to New Jersey when Cofer was 4, they again relocated to Augusta, Georgia in 1967. Cofer would...

Mary Hood was born in Brunswick, Georgia on September 16, 1946. Though a versatile writer of excelling in many forms—including novels, essays and reviews—she is predominantly a master of short fiction. Her preferred literary expression is the...

Ancillary Justice is a science fiction novel by American author Ann Leckie. It is her debut novel, and the first section of her trilogy "Imperial Radch". Ancillary Justice was highly praised, winning the Hugo Award, Nebula Award, BSFA Award,...

Written by Natalie Diaz, a former women's international professional basketball player who returned to Old Dominion University to pursue a writing degree, When My Brother Was An Aztec is a collection of prose and poetry. The book is Diaz's...

Yvain, the Knight of the Lion is romance poem written by the French writer Chretien de Troyes. Though the exact dates of when it was written are unknown, it is written presumably written in the 1170s along with Lancelot because there are a lot of...

Alejandro Morales's 'The Rag Doll Plagues' is an ambitious dystopic novel, set in three different locations across the globe at three different points in time. In each of the three sections of the novel, we encounter three different doctors of...

Written in 1993 by David Malouf, an Australian writer, Remembering Babylon is a novel that centers around an English boy, Gemmy Fairley, who is stranded on an island and raised by the island's natives. It was critically acclaimed, winning the...

Published in 2000, Pastoralia is George Saunders's second short story collection. Like its predecessor, it was highly celebrated, being ranked the fifth-greatest book of all time by literary magazine The Millions.

Pastoralia is comprised of (many...

Although Henry VIII is attributed to the Shakespeare canon and found in nearly every single collection of his plays, the general consensus has long been that the play which brings into the cycle of Shakespeare’s histories the most drama-worthy of...