Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction is a memoir written by David Sheff about his family’s journey through their son’s methamphetamine addiction, published in 2008. It was based on The New York Times Magazine article “My...

“Beartown” is a first novel in the series written by a famous Swedish author, Fredrik Backman. Beartown is a translation of the Swedish name of the small town, Bjornstad, where the novel is set. The novel centers around the town’s tradition in ice...

The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time is a non-fiction book that explores the theory of evolution written by Jonathan Weiner. It was published in 1994 and won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction the following year.

The...

Another Brooklyn is a novel by Jacqueline Woodson published in 2016. Although Woodson is primarily known as the author of several successful books for younger readers, Another Brooklyn is directed toward an adult readership with its themes that...

American Street is a young adult fictional novel by Ibi Zoboi. Published in 2017 by Balzer & Bray, the novel tells a powerful and evoking story about an immigrant family finding their way in the USA after leaving Haiti, only to stumble upon...

The Rosie Project was originally written as a screenplay when Graeme Simsion studied screenwriting at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia in 2006-2007. By 2008, he had completed a draft of a screenplay called The Klara Project, a romantic...

“My Papa’s Waltz,” a 1948 poem by the American writer Theodore Roethke, explores themes of familial conflict, abuse, and intergenerational masculinity through descriptions of a father and son dancing. The poem was published in 1942, but also...

"Poppies in October" is a short poem written by American poet Sylvia Plath, focusing on the contrast between urban and rural life and on the world's capacity to produce unexpected beauty. The poem was published in Plath's 1965 poetry collection ...

"The Next War" is a 1917 poem by the British writer Wilfred Owen, in which a soldier narrates his experiences with a personified version of death in order to ultimately condemn the nationalistic forces behind war. Like many of Owen's poems, "The...

One of Percy Shelley's most beloved poems, "The Cloud," published in 1820, exemplifies the poet's revolutionary spirit as it transforms the work's namesake into a universal symbol of change. As the cloud undergoes a variety of transformations—a...

Aunt Jennifer's Tigers is a poem written by American poet Adrienne Rich. It was first published in her anthology collection, A Change of World (1951).

In the poem, Aunt Jennifer is sewing tapestries of beautiful and vibrant tigers. The speaker...

Donald Barthelme's Snow White, published in 1967, is a postmodernist retelling of the Snow White fairytale. Snow White and the seven dwarves—Bill, Kevin, Edward, Hubert, Henry, Clem, and Dan—share an apartment and the novel loosely focuses on the...

"Gretel in Darkness" is a 1975 poem by the American poet Louise Glück, exploring themes of trauma and justice through a retelling of the well-known fairytale "Hansel and Gretel." It was first published in Glück's collection The House on the...

“1914” is a war poem, written by famed poet and author, Wilfred Owen, who also served as a soldier during World War I. The poem was published posthumously as Owen died in action in 1918.

This poem uses the seasons to describe the reckoning effects...

Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse is one of Anne Carson’s early fictional works, following Glass, Irony and God (1995) and Plainwater (1995). Published in 1998 to general acclaim, it was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and was...

To a Mouse is a poem written by Scottish poet Robert Burns, published in 1785.

The poem describes the speaker’s regret at accidentally destroying a mouse’s nest. The speaker is forced to think about many others in a similar situation, in which...

"Amends" is a poem by the lesbian feminist poet Adrienne Rich. Written in 1995, it was published fairly late in her career, in the collection Dark Fields of the Republic: Poems 1991-1995. The book responds to an American democracy Rich perceived...

"Ae Fond Kiss" is a lyric poem written by Robert Burns in which a speaker addresses his lover on the occasion of their permanent parting. It was first published in the fourth volume of the series Scots Musical Museum, published by James Johnson,...

“Easter, 1916” is one of Irish poet William Butler Yeats’s most famous poems. The poem was written about an event known as the “Easter Rising.” On Easter Sunday of 1916, a group of Irish Republicans who wanted an independent Irish republic...