Literature

8 books to lift you out of darkness

When Shaka Senghor (Watch: Shaka Senghor: Why your worst deeds don’t define you) was nineteen, he shot and killed a man — and was sentenced to spend the second nineteen years of...

Elizabeth Gilbert: The 7 books that shaped me as a writer

“The only thing I have ever wanted to be for my whole life was a writer. I wrote all through childhood, all through adolescence, by the time I was a teenager I was sending my ve...

What happens when we read poetry?

In an ode to the art of odes, poetry critic Stephen Burt demonstrates through lyrical explication that the practice of poetry is tied to being human. Says Burt, “The patterns in...