In the conclusion to his season-long exploration of Saul Bellow’s work, Daniel Wallace tackles the sticky problem of Bellow’s endings, what happens to characters over a 50-year career, and how the author’s nonfiction illuminates his talent for storytelling and argument—perhaps even moreso than the novels.

In this two-part essay, Daniel Wallace devotes himself to the work of Saul Bellow for a season. Total immersion in Bellow’s progress as a writer reveals the perplexing philosophical problems at the heart of many of the novels, the difference between early and later books, and the unadulterated beauty of Bellow’s paragraphs.

Over the past six decades, Iraqi writer Mahmoud Saeed has used his novels, stories, and nonfiction to deconstruct the political and social turmoil of his beloved homeland. In a wide-ranging conversation with Stephen Morison, Jr., Saeed describes the difficulties Arab authors face in getting published, the institutionalized barriers to freedom of expression, and his constant attempt, through fiction, to “solve the puzzle of man and his actions.”

We seldom think of judges as writers, but as any lawyer will tell you, written decisions are the bulk of the court’s work. Recently, the Scribes Journal of Legal Writing published interviews with the SCOTUS justices (as they’re known in legal circles), and surprise: many of them appreciate reading, especially fiction, as the basis [...]

Myla Goldberg, author of Bee Season and lead singer of The Walking Hellos, discusses her voracious reading as a child, her new novel The False Friend, the trickiness of memory, love of a good trashy novel, and much more with Casey Tolfree.

What does our reading have to do with our writing, exactly? In this first installment of a new column, Contrasts and Charms, Charlotte Boulay departs from traditional talk about fiction, reflects on her own reading list, and finds comfort and enthusiasm in reading Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell’s letters to each other, in which they discuss everything they read—and the fact that they read all the time.

Today, March 2, is Read Across America Day, in honor of Dr. Seuss’s birthday. (Really—here’s the official presidential proclamation.) Funded by the NEA Foundation for the Improvement of Education, the event’s goal is simple: to motivate children to read. Says the event’s website:
The First Lady and NEA President Dennis Van Roekel welcome a star-studded [...]

The following guest post is by Josie Keenan, an FWR intern and second-year student at the University of Michigan.
More and more these days, I find myself bemoaning the fate of books. As Lee discussed in her recent blog “Let’s get digital”, downloadable books have been available for some time now. Digitization is one aspect [...]

In a bit of Whisper-Down-The-Lane, this came to me from FWR’s own Michael Rudin, who got it from Matt Bell, who mentions Aaron Burch in his original post. Whew! But this trailer for Portlandia (a new show debuting on IFC tonight, which apparently is now up on Hulu – thanks again Matt) is too hilarious [...]

You may not know photographer Steve McCurry by name, but you probably know his famous photo “Afghan Girl.” (In fact, McCurry is so respected in the photography world that he was given the very last roll of Kodachrome ever produced.)
On his blog, McCurry offers a photo essay of readers from around the [...]