Our weekly round-up of literary news here at Catalyst and beyond, is brought to you by our intern Naomi Valenzuela. Naomi is from Phoenix, Arizona and El Paso, Texas, and is majoring in Creative Writing and minoring in English & American Literature at the University of Texas, El Paso, with plans of working in the publishing business after graduation.
Over at NPR, there’s an article with author L.L. McKinney about Barnes & Noble’s controversial campaign for Black History Month. Read and listen about why people have taken an issue with it, and ways it could have been better.
Get in the Valentine’s Day spirit at the Washington Post with this list of authors dedicating their books to their loved ones.
Our own Caroline Kurtz (A Road Called Down on Both Sides) is working the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association to help bring electricity to Maji, a town in Ethiopia she considers her second home. Read all about this effort at NRECA International
We are also pleased to announce Max Annas’ (The Wall, The Farm) book tour this month! You can find out more information about places and dates here.
Take a different perspective into this everyday act of many South Africans on Okayafrica. Artist and photographer Luxolo Witvoet has a photo series on Cape Town’s frustrations and dependencies on their train system.
Oscar season may be over but on LitHub there is this year’s, Book Oscars. Here Emily Temple narrows down the best of recent literature’s setting, literary citizens, and much more.
Need to kill some time? Check out these super short flash fiction stories that have a lot to say over on Electric Lit.
Also on Electric Lit, recommendations for readers looking to step outside comfort zones and into the bizarre and sometimes unsettling. Author Sean Adams recommends these seven books with reality-bending settings.
