What were you reading, doing, or making this week? Let us know in the comments!
Three things we couldn’t help but mention first:
1. Today’s (heart)breaking news that Philip Seymour Hoffman has left us too soon. My favorites of his are Capote and 25th Hour. What are yours? 2. Dylan Farrow’s searing open letter on Nicholas Kristof’s blog and the explosive reaction its garnered (among the most moving were those who have taken Farrow’s bravery as an opportunity to share their own experiences of the suffocating silence child victims are often forced to endure). 3. And obviously, you don’t need any more links, so we’ll just admit we’ve been reading a fair amount of Super Bowl coverage and be done with it.
Now, on to our recommended reading from this week:
The #ArtandFeminism hashtag publicizing Saturday’s Art + Feminism Wikipedia Edit-A-Thon which had over 20 sites worldwide but featured packed-house gatherings at Eyebeam and The Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum. Speaking of the Sackler Center, we loved this review of their exhibit, “Lorraine Hansberry: Twice Militant,” at Hyperallergic.
With #artandfeminism on the brain, it seems especially fitting that we were also reading (and highly recommend!) this piece by Molly Crabapple, one of our heroines here at TBQ, on turning 30. “Age is a weapon society uses against women,” she points out, but it’s a false one. “Yes, you get older, but you can also grow tougher, kinder, braver,” she writes. “You can claw out the life you wanted.” Yes we damn well can!
There are new Sappho poems, so we had to read about them. Yes, we revel in our classics nerd-dom here at TBQ.
Though we are nerds, we also revel in public ideas, so we were especially interested in two very different pieces highlighting the increasingly tired myth of the university as ivory tower. You may already know that Twitter has been an amazing space for academic feminists to find their rightful voice as public intellectuals, but if you don’t, you should definitely follow these women immediately. We will also be very curious to watch how Northwestern’s football players’ filing to unionize will play out (especially in light of the recent vote at NYU).
Recommended watching: this trailer for an upcoming documentary about Anita Hill (coming to theaters March 21).
From the TBQ Crew, Elsewhere and Around the Internets
Huge congratulations to TBQ contributing editor Joshua Bennett (read “For Levi” from issue 1), a founding and poetry editor at the new Kinfolks: a journal of black expression. You should definitely check them out!
Congratulations are also in order for poet Anna Ross (read her poems from issue 1 here!) on being named a Poetry Fellow by the Massachusetts Cultural Council.
Advisory editor Rivka Galchen discussed James Joyce’s legacy with Pankaj Mishra in last Sunday’s NYT Book Review.
TBQ Issue 2 on Translation is coming, y’all! Whet your appetite for reading the likes of issue 2 contributor Dina Nayeri (author of A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea), who will be reading with fiction writer Catherine Chung and poet Mai Der Vang at the Asian American Writers Workshop on Thursday, February 6. Details and RVSP here.
image credit: flickr/andy z