Ted Hughes

Adorable Letters from Famous Authors to Their Children

You’ve heard it before, but we’ll say it again: it’s a shame people don’t write letters anymore. Especially writers, whose missives are often so beautifully composed and simply inspiring that we hoard them in volume upon volume. We’ve already put together a collection of authors’ letters to their young fans, but this week, we spotted this wonderful letter from Sherwood Anderson to his son over at Brain Pickings, and we were inspired to dig a little further into the letters writers send their own children. After the jump, read loving, advice-filled, gentle parental love letters from some of our favorite authors to some of their favorite people — their kids. … Read More

The Artist and the Critic: 8 Famous Author/Editor Relationships

This week, we were totally psyched to hear that Colin Firth and Michael Fassbender will be playing Thomas Wolfe and his legendary editor Max Perkins in a film adaption of A. Scott Berg’s National Book Award–winning account of their relationship, Max Perkins: Editor of Genius. And not just for all the Firth/Fassbender it means we’ll be getting. Inspired by this national nod towards an important literary relationship, we’ve rounded up a few other famous author/editor relationships to inspire both the critics and the scribblers among you. Read about them after the jump, and if we’ve missed your favorite, tell us the story in the comments. … Read More

10 Real-Life Literary Power Couples

Artists love other artists. Perhaps there is an electric connection between two people whose minds are always whirring, or literary snobs can’t bear to date laymen, or perhaps for some writers, the only way they know their partner will understand them is if that person is also a writer. No matter what it is, there’s something powerful about a couple on the same team in the same industry. Plus, everybody loves a celebrity couple, and we particularly love literary celebrity couples. We like to imagine their arguments as poetic and their children as geniuses, and their lives spent sitting around in oaken rooms drinking brandy and scribbling between loving looks. Well, maybe that’s not realistic. But to each their own celebrity fantasy, right? Click through for our list of ten of our favorite real-life literary power couples — and let us know which ones we’ve missed in the comments! … Read More

The Morning's Top 5 Pop Culture Stories

1. Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa has been awarded the Nobel Prize in literature. He is the first South American to win the prize since Gabriel Garcia Marquez in 1982. [via NYT]
2. Christina Hendricks once sold a ticket to Johnny Depp’s birthday party for $50 in order to have money to… Read More

Assigned Reading: The Ultimate World Cup Reading List

While the hype for this Saturday’s USA v. England match may be at a rolling boil, relatively speaking, soccer isn’t exactly in America’s DNA. If you just want to know who’s who in the World Cup, you can always check out the group guides and team profiles over at ESPN, the Guardian, or Bolas and Bandeiras. But what if you want to know what to watch for and what all the excitement is about? Well, you might just have to dig a bit deeper. To that end, we’ve selected a half dozen soccer reads that are perfect companions for the June madness that is upon us. … Read More

A Few Audio/Visual Treats for Literary Geeks

* Sam Lipsyte: Leg Warmer Guy

* Truman Capote reading from Breakfast at Tiffany’s at the 92nd Street Y Poetry Center in 1963

* Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes talk about how they met

* A clip from David Foster Wallace‘s Kenyon College Commencement Speech

* John Banville reads from… Read More

We'd Totally Buy a Car From Ikea [Morning Links]

Ask a Flowchart: Which Blowhard Am I? (We’re Jeff Jarvis.)

Play “Which Bro is not in the band?” with Grizzly Bear

George Orwell, doting dad?

Is Ikea is planning to launch a modular car concept?

Living With Music: A Bollywood Playlist by Daphne Beal

“Men, they concluded, are just… Read More