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In 'The Chalk Artist,' A Plea For Real-World Connection

7:00am June 15, 2017

by Heller McAlpin

While the love story in Allegra Goodman's latest novel can seem formulaic, she captures the allure of video gaming and the tension between real-world art and literature and the fantasy worlds online.

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Confronting The Possibility Of Monsters In 'The Essex Serpent'

4:48pm June 14, 2017

by Ari Shapiro

The clash between science and religious belief lies at the heart of Sarah Perry's new novel, set in a marshy, windswept English town menaced by a serpentine monster that may or may not truly exist.

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Arts

'Mormama' Is A House Built On Quicksand

1:00pm June 14, 2017

by Amal El-Mohtar

Kit Reed's would-be Southern Gothic chiller starts strong, with an amnesiac man stumbling into a house haunted by family secrets — but is ultimately undone by issues of plot, pacing and voice work.

The new poet laureate of the United States, Tracy K. Smith, visits the Library of Congress Poetry and Literature Center in Washington, D.C., last month.

Tracy K. Smith, New U.S. Poet Laureate, Calls Poems Her 'Anchor'

8:23am June 14, 2017

by Camila Domonoske

The Pulitzer Prize-winning poet says she plans to use her new role to meet people who don't read poetry ... yet, anyway. She believes poetry can be a resource for people in fraught or isolating times.

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Arts

Tracy K. Smith Named U.S. Poet Laureate

5:13am June 14, 2017

by Lynn Neary

The Library of Congress has named Tracy K. Smith as the the country's new poet laureate. She's the author of three collections of poetry and won the Pulitzer Prize in 2012.

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What Makes A Good Whodunit? 'Magpie Murders' Author Spells It Out

4:32pm June 13, 2017

by Lynn Neary

Anthony Horowitz's latest novel is a whodunit about whodunits. He says, "I wanted it to be ... a sort of a treatise on the whole genre of murder mystery writing."

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Journalist Ventured 'Behind The Lines Of Jihad' To Interview The World's Most Wanted

1:26pm June 13, 2017

Washington Post correspondent Souad Mekhennet has risked kidnapping and imprisonment to report on extremist groups, such as ISIS and the Taliban. Her new memoir is I Was Told to Come Alone.

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The Show that Never Ends, by David Weigel

Prog Rock Gets Some Respect In 'The Show That Never Ends'

12:33pm June 13, 2017

by Jason Heller

David Weigel is primarily a political reporter, but in The Show that Never Ends he spins his love of prog rock into a detailed, affectionate history of a genre that's never completely gone away.

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Arts

'So Much Blue' Is Percival Everett's Best Yet

10:56am June 13, 2017

by Michael Schaub

By turns funny, shocking and heartbreaking, Everett's new novel follows a painter who's deeply ambivalent about his apparently idyllic life and digs into the moments in his past that shaped him.

'Hue 1968' Revisits An American 'Turning Point' In The War In Vietnam

1:38pm June 12, 2017

Author Mark Bowden says the capture of Hue, Vietnam, was part of a wave of well-planned Communist attacks that shocked American commanders and helped turn U.S. public opinion against the war.

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