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Posted by: Caitlin Rizzo
The following is a guest post written by Lee Ann Potter, the director of Educational Outreach at the Library of Congress. Fourteen years ago, when I was pregnant with my son, I began keeping a journal. It is not a daily activity for me, but I do write something nearly once a month. Mostly, I …
Posted in: Guest Posts
Posted by: Caitlin Rizzo
Yesterday marked the 100th birthday of Robert Hayden, who was the first African American to be named to the Library of Congress Consultant in Poetry position–what we today would call the Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry–in 1976. NPR commemorated Hayden’s birthday by featuring an archived recording: “In His Own Words.” Over at the Los Angeles …
Posted in: News and Events, Poets Laureate
Posted by: Caitlin Rizzo
Summer at the Library of Congress is a magical time. The halls of the Library’s Jefferson Building seem to fill with students and families, just as the desks in our office spaces seem to mysteriously go quiet and colleagues make a break for their own vacation. For me, it’s the season of the perfect lunch …
Posted in: Collections
Posted by: Caitlin Rizzo
The Bank of England announced last week that beginning in 2017 Jane Austen will replace Charles Darwin on the 10-pound note. The Times asks the question: which American authors would you choose to grace the dollar bill? You might want to start with a perusal of the Library’s Books That Shaped America beforehand. Wouldn’t want …
Posted in: Collections, News and Events
Posted by: Caitlin Rizzo
The following is a guest post written by Jessica Edington, a summer intern at the Library of Congress. In my summer internship in the Library’s Humanities and Social Services Division I’ve worked with “old media,” or soon-to-be old media. One of my projects is helping sort and catalogue the pre-1998 software in the Machine Readable …
Posted in: Guest Posts
Posted by: Caitlin Rizzo
Last Saturday was Cormac McCarthy’s birthday, and BookRiot celebrated with “A Beginner’s Guide to Cormac McCarthy.” We don’t have all the YouTube videos, but the Library does have quite a stash on Mr. McCarthy. You can come listen to Cormac read from The Crossing or just follow the links to the sample text here for …
Posted in: Interviews, News and Events
Posted by: Caitlin Rizzo
Salon has published a list of Six Most Influential Women Writers You’ve Never Heard Of. You may have a hard time tracking down these ladies in a books store (true to advertisement, I had never read any of their works), but a quick perusal through our catalog showed that they live on in our collections. …
Posted in: Uncategorized
Posted by: Caitlin Rizzo
According to the Smithsonian’s “Surprising Science” blog, a life of reading and writing can help you stave off mental decline as you age. This is fantastic news for us at the Poetry and Literature Center, or was until we read the part about reaching peak mental agility at 22. On the plus side, our non-peak …
Posted in: News and Events
Posted by: Caitlin Rizzo
Last Friday, Julio Cortazar’s groundbreaking novel Hopscotch turned 50. For a slightly late Monday morning celebration, Cortazar fans should head to the Los Angeles Review of Books to read Ted Gioia’s essay “How to Win at Hopscotch.” Of course, if you’ve only read Cortazar’s short story collection you received for Christmas two years ago, you …
Posted in: Collections, News and Events, Poets Laureate