Books & Literary Life

Literary criticism, author interviews, and book culture from within and beyond Harvard.

Open Book: A New Nuclear Age

Harvard historian Serhii Plokhy’s latest book looks at the rising danger of a new arms race.

Alain Locke as activist aesthete

Rediscovering Alain Locke and the project of black self-realization

by Adam Kirsch

Excerpt from "The Annotated African American Folktales"

The power and legacy of African-American folktales

Recent books with Harvard connections

Recent books with Harvard connections

Chapter and verse quotation-citation correspondence site

Correspondence on not-so-famous lost words

“Gorey’s World” at the Wadsworth Atheneum

Edward Gorey’s own art collection at the Wadsworth Atheneum

by Nell Porter-Brown

Chapter and verse quotation-citation correspondence site

Correspondence on not-so-famous lost words

Off the Shelf: Recent Books with Harvard Connections

Recent books with Harvard connections

Father Columba Stewart of Hill Museum & Manuscript Library is profiled

A globe-trotting monk with the Benedictine “survival gene” seeks out treasured manuscripts.

by Nell Porter-Brown

Children's-book author Nancy Churnin is profiled

Nancy Churnin’s picture-book biographies for children span time and space.

by Sanya Sagar

Critic and poet Fred Moten, profiled by Jesse McCarthy

Fred Moten’s subversive black-studies scholarship

by Jesse McCarthy