In a month when spring showers beget May flowers, I bring you a mystery character from a land of dramatic and drenching weather. Let’s see if you can figure out who it is!
This character has sparked debate among readers and scholars about the story of their ancestry and what that meant for their role in the novel.
From the moment this character arrived on the page, critics deemed them to be “cruel and contemptible.” But those qualities only added to the aura of danger that swirls around this person.
This character can be both deeply transgressive and powerfully magnetic.
Who created this character? Here’s a clue: The writer, who knew the story would be shocking, published the book under a pen name.
Do you know who the character is? And the author who created them? Email me at: kmiller@mpr.org. I’ll answer all guesses until 5 p.m. on Monday.
Email sstroozas@mpr.org to have your literary event added to the list.
— Sam Stroozas, MPR News
🤔 What's the newsroom reading?
Right now I'm reading the nonfiction book "What Debt Demands" by Minnesota writer Kristin Collier. It's absolutely riveting: a beautifully written memoir about how debt can snowball and overtake the lives — physically and mentally — of not just one person but an extended family.
Collier's own experience is the heart of the story, but she weaves in information about how debt works in systems past and present, as well as contemporary interviews and examples from literature. If you live with debt, you'll feel seen. If you don't, you'll learn so much.
— Emily Bright, MPR News
📰 Bite-sized Minnesota book news
There's a new bookstore in St. Paul. Let's say a warm welcome to Acorn Bookshop, located in the St. Anthony Park neighborhood!
Local romance autor Abby Jimenez's latest book, "The Night We Met," is the
No. 1 best selling hardcover in the U.S. according to the New York Times.
A new bookstore was announced in Forest Lake on April 1. New Moons Bookshop will specialize in fantasy and science fiction and open at the end of May.
Are you a local author, bookstore or literary lover? Send your book news to sstroozas@mpr.org and we'll add it to the newsleter.
For more than a decade, the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop has provided creative writing classes to people in correctional facilities. That work has led to the creation of Lost Kite Editions, a national independent press.
In her new book, professor and writer Daisy Hernandez says that legal definition is just one layer of a complicated idea. Citizenship is really about who gets to belong.
The shortlisted titles include novels and novellas from authors and translators spanning four continents, with stories that range from Japanese-controlled 1930s Taiwan to the streets of Tehran in 1979.
From Rhysand in “A Court of Thorns and Roses” to Kingfisher in "Fae and Alchemy," Anthony Palmini is a voiceover star for romantasy’s bestsellers — a book genre that continues to explode.
