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Adam Ross, author of the New York Times Notable Book Mr. Peanut, takes us on a tour of his beloved Nashville, "a great secret, cool as all get-out but never self-consciously hip or competitive," with a literary life as vibrant as its musical one.
Author and Tin House Magazine editor Michelle Wildgen serves as our guide to the literary locales of Madison, Wisconsin, a city whose lofty earnestness in everything from food to literature inspired her two novels.
Before heading to the Iowa Summer Writing Festival, held throughout June and July, get acquainted with the reading series, bars, landmarks, and people—including our guide Jan Weissmiller, co-owner of indie bookseller Prairie Lights Books—of designated City of Literature Iowa City.
On his writers tour of Portland, Maine, award-winning author Ron Currie Jr. sets out to "dispel the persistent notion that Maine is intellectually DOA" by showcasing the city's thriving literary scene.
In the midst of the political protests that were escalating in Wisconsin last winter, three library science majors at the University of Wisconsin devised the Library as Incubator Project, a website for writers, artists, and librarians to share their creations and ideas in one collaborative space.
Native New Orleanian John Biguenet, author of seven books and many prizewinning plays, highlights postflood literary New Orleans—"a palimpsest" on which "the past bleeds through the fresh culture now being inscribed over the submerged text, centuries old."
The Archives and Special Collections at Amherst College holds more than 80,000 books and 11,000 linear feet of archival materials. Notable collections include an extensive Emily Dickinson manuscript collection, holdings of books by and about Robert Frost, and books by Richard Wilbur, Louise Bogan, James Merrill, and Carl Sandburg.
The principal repository of rare books, manuscripts and archival materials at Cornell University, the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections houses 430,000 printed volumes and more than 80 million manuscripts. Notable holdings include the papers and archival materials of James Joyce, E.B. White, Vladimir Nabokov, William Wordsworth, A.R. Ammons, and George Bernard Shaw. The library also serves as a resource center for the study of book history, offering both a semester course in the Cornell English Department and a weeklong summer course for Cornell Adult University.
The principal repository of Vassar College, the Archives and Special Collections Library houses rare books dating from the fifteenth century, an extensive manuscript collection, and the Vassar College Archives. The holdings range from medieval illuminated manuscripts to modern manuscripts and include over 500 collections of Vassar College graduates, faculty, and others affiliated with the college. Of special note are the papers of writers Mary McCarthy and Elizabeth Bishop, Samuel L. Clemens, and Edna St.
The special collections library of Brown University, the John Hay Library contains more than 3,000,000 items. Holdings range from Babylonian clay tablets and Egyptian papyri to current-day books, manuscripts, and ephemera. Among the more unexpected items are portraits and paintings by old masters, Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s tea set, Napoleon’s death mask, 6,000 toy soldiers, the last daguerrotype taken of Poe, and Whitman’s personal copy of Leaves of Grass. Other notable holdings include the papers and archival materials of Henry David Thoreau, George Orwell, William Blake, and H. G.
