Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Burlington Book Festival: 9/23 - 9/25

The 7th Annual Burlington Book Festival takes place this coming Friday, Saturday, and Sunday throughout downtown Burlington.  This celebration of writing and writers will feature readings, signings, workshops, panels, music, and more.   The event is free and will feature readings and talks by writers such as the recently appointed U.S. Poet Laureate Philip Levine, as well as Yannick Murphy, Elinor Lipman, David Macaulay, children's author Tanya Lee Stone, and many others.

Below, PBS talks with Philip Levine in August, shortly after his appointment as the new U.S. Poet Laureate.


Watch the full episode. See more PBS NewsHour.

Things We Never Told You: Ode to a Bookstore Death

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Gallery of Antique Typewriters


Check out Slate.com's "Fantastic Typing Machines," a "gallery of old typewriters that look more like sewing machines, phonographs, and torture devices."

Saturday, September 10, 2011

Writers Look Back on 9/11

In its piece "Introducing 9/11 Stories," U.K.'s The Guardian asked six writers to reflect back on the changes and conflict that have occurred in the last ten years since 9/11.  The Guardian's selection of writers is especially remarkable for its global diversity:  The series kicks off with the short story "Temple of Tears" by the brilliant and funny Geoff Dyer, and also includes work by Pakistani novelist Kamila Shamsti, Nigerian novelist Helon Habila, Moroccan-born novelist Laila Lalami, British-American fiction writer Rob Magnuson Smith, and British fiction writer Will Self.

Magic Trip




From the Magic Trip official movie site:

"In 1964, Ken Kesey, the famed author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, set off on a legendary, LSD-fuelled cross-country road trip to the New York World’s Fair. He was joined by “The Merry Band of Pranksters,” a renegade group of counterculture truth-seekers, including Neal Cassady, the American icon immortalized in Kerouac’s On the Road, and the driver and painter of the psychedelic Magic Bus. Kesey and the Pranksters intended to make a documentary about their trip, shooting footage on 16MM, but the film was never finished and the footage has remained virtually unseen. With MAGIC TRIP, Gibney and Ellwood were given unprecedented access to this raw footage by the Kesey family. They worked with the Film Foundation, HISTORY and the UCLA Film Archives to restore over 100 hours of film and audiotape, and have shaped an invaluable document of this extraordinary piece of American history."