I am the head of the Poetry and Literature Center at the Library. The Center is home to the U.S. Poet Laureate, the only federally-funded position for a literary artist in the country and the most visible position for a poet by far.
Learn about Zora Neale Hurston's time in Florida with the Federal Writers project in the May/June 2015 "Sources and Strategies" article in Social Education, the journal of the National Council for the Social Studies.
Enduring themes, characters, and images from Shakespeare's writing have long been woven into the fabric of other media and popular culture. Examining relevant primary sources from the collections of the Library of Congress may strengthen student connections to a particular work.
F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby is one of the most often taught in American literature classes. However, the further we move away chronologically from 1922, a time of economic boom following the devastation of World War I, the less students know about this significant time between the Great War and the War to end all Wars.
Because of his tendency toward the macabre, the stories of Edgar Allan Poe are frequently associated with Halloween, but his writing has had a far deeper reach than connections to the holiday. As National Poetry Month approaches, students can explore his work and its cultural impact through primary sources from the Library of Congress.