88.5 WFDD - Maya Angelou: Recent Episodes
Jonathan Franklin
The Maya Angelou quarter is the first in the American Women Quarters Program, which will feature other prominent women in U.S. history. The other quarters in the series will begin rolling out later this year and through 2025, according to the U.S. Mint.
Burwell and Burwell Photography / United States Mint image
A new quarter featuring legendary poet and civil rights activist Maya Angelou and other trailblazing American women has officially started shipping to banks on Monday, the U.S. Mint announced. Angelou is the first Black woman to appear on the quarter.
The Maya Angelou design is the first quarter in the "American Women Quarters Program," a four-year program that will include coins featuring prominent women in U.S. history.
The other honorees include astronaut Sally Ride; actress Anna May Wong; suffragist and politician Nina Otero-Warren; and Wilma Mankiller, the first female principal chief of the Cherokee Nation. The coins featuring the other honorees will be shipped out this year through 2025, according to the Mint.
Angelou, who died in 2014 at the age of 86, held many distinctions. She received a Presidential Medal of Freedom from former President Barack Obama and won the Literarian Award (an honorary National Book Award). In 1992, she became the first Black woman (and second-ever poet) to write and present a poem at a presidential inauguration, in 1992. She also held more than 30 honorary degrees and published more than 30 bestselling works.
"Each 2022 quarter is designed to reflect the breadth and depth of accomplishments being celebrated throughout this historic coin program. Maya Angelou, featured on the reverse of this first coin in the series, used words to inspire and uplift," Mint Deputy Director Ventris C. Gibson said in a statement.
The Angelou quarter shows the writer and poet on the "tails" side of the coin, with her arms uplifted. Behind her are a bird and the rising sun. The Mint says those images are "inspired by her poetry and symbolic of the way she lived."
The "heads" side features a portrait of George Washington by a female sculptor that was first recommended to the Mint back in 1932. At the time, it selected a design by John Flanagan to portray Washington.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen celebrated the new coins, praising how far America has "progressed as a society."
"I'm very proud that these coins celebrate the contributions of some of America's most remarkable women, including Maya Angelou," Yellen said in a separate statement.
Several lawmakers, such as California Democrat Rep. Barbara Lee and Senator Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, applauded the release of the new coin on Monday.
"The phenomenal women who shaped American history have gone unrecognized for too long — especially women of color," Lee said in a tweet. "Proud to have led this bill to honor their legacies."
Lee was influential in introducing the Circulating Collectible Coin Redesign Act of 2020; the act passed in Jan. 2021 and essentially paved the way for the design of the new commemoration coins.
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The Maya Angelou Quarter. Image from the United States Mint. Screenshot: KERI BROWN/WFDD
Poet, actress, author, and activist Maya Angelou will be honored on U.S. coins.
The United States Mint is honoring the achievements of women who have had an impact on the nation’s history.
The American Women Quarters Program was authorized by Congress and celebrates a diverse group from different eras and backgrounds. Maya Angelou’s quarter shows her arms wide open and lifted with the image of a bird and sun shining behind her.
Some of her notable work includes her autobiography "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings." In 1993, Angelou was the first African American woman to write and present a poem at a presidential inauguration.
She had strong ties to North Carolina.
Angelou lived in Winston-Salem and taught students at Wake Forest University for more than 30 years.
She died in 2014 at the age of 86.
The first series of coins will also feature astronaut Sally Ride; actress Anna May Wong; suffragist and politician Nina Otero-Warren; and Wilma Mankiller, the first female principal chief of the Cherokee Nation.
The coins will be released beginning next year through 2025.
*Correction: A previous version of this story indicated that Angelou wrote and presented a poem at the presidential inauguration in 1992. The inauguration was in 1993.
Follow WFDD's Keri Brown on Twitter @kerib_news
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american women quarters program #u.s. mint #quarter dollars #maya angelou #wake forest university #coins #women
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Poet and activist Maya Angelou seen addressing the Democratic National in Boston, Massachusetts in July 2004. She is one of the female trailblazers who will be featured on some U.S. quarters starting in 2022.
Timothy A. Clary / AFP via Getty Images
Some U.S. coins will soon feature female trailblazers from different eras of American history, representing their accomplishments in fields spanning civil rights, politics, humanities and science.
That's thanks to the U.S. Mint's American Women Quarters Program, which was authorized by Congress earlier this year. The four-year program will introduce five coins, with tails honoring a diverse group of historical icons, each year between 2022 and 2025.
The Mint unveiled the designs for the first batch on Wednesday. They recognize the achievements of poet Maya Angelou; astronaut Sally Ride; actress Anna May Wong; suffragist and politician Nina Otero-Warren; and Wilma Mankiller, the first female principal chief of the Cherokee Nation.
"These inspiring coin designs tell the stories of five extraordinary women whose contributions are indelibly etched in American culture," said United States Mint acting Director Alison L. Doone in a statement. "Generations to come will look at coins bearing these designs and be reminded of what can be accomplished with vision, determination and a desire to improve opportunities for all."
The front of the coins will feature a portrait of George Washington, created by prolific 20th-century sculptor Laura Gardin Fraser in honor of his 200th birthday (it was submitted as a candidate for the 1932 quarter, but ultimately passed over). They will be available for sale online starting next year.
Read on to learn more about these women and what their quarters will look like. (And while they'll be faces on coins, you can guess what they'd say about women still making 82 cents for every dollar earned by men in the U.S.)
Maya AngelouThe late writer, performer and social activist already holds many distinctions. Among them: She received a Presidential Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama, won the Literarian Award (an honorary National Book Award), became the first Black woman (and second-ever poet) to write and present a poem at a presidential inauguration in 1992, held more than 30 honorary degrees and published more than 30 bestselling works.
Angelou's quarter will depict her with her arms uplifted, in front of a bird in flight and a rising sun. The Mint says those images are "inspired by her poetry and symbolic of the way she lived."
Sally RideThe late astronaut, physicist and educator is best known as the first American woman — and youngest American — to travel to space. She dedicated the rest of her career to inspiring young people, particularly girls, in STEM. She was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame, Aviation Hall of Fame and Astronaut Hall of Fame.
Her quarter design shows her next to a window on a space shuttle, which the Mint says is inspired by her quote "But when I wasn't working, I was usually at a window looking down at Earth."
Wilma Mankiller Mankiller was the first woman elected principal chief of the Cherokee Nation in 1987, and is celebrated as an activist for Native American and women's rights. The Mint notes that during her two terms in office, she tripled her tribe's enrollment, doubled employment and built new housing, health centers and children's programs in northeast Oklahoma.
"Under her leadership, infant mortality declined and educational levels rose," it says. "Her leadership on social and financial issues made her tribe a national role model."
She's also a Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient and National Women's Hall of Fame inductee. Mankiller's coin shows her in profile, looking ahead with the wind in her back and wearing a traditional shawl. It also features the seven-pointed star of the Cherokee Nation.
Nina Otero-WarrenOtero-Warren was a leading suffragist in New Mexico and the first female superintendent of Santa Fe public schools. She championed the lobbying effort to ratify the 19th Amendment, and emphasized the importance of speaking Spanish in the suffrage fight in order to reach Hispanic women.
"Otero-Warren strove to improve education for all New Mexicans, working especially to advance bicultural education and to preserve cultural practices among the state's Hispanic and Native American communities," the Mint says.
Her coin shows her gazing ahead with her hands clasped in front of her, alongside the words "Voto Para La Mujer" and three Yucca flowers, New Mexico's state flower.
Anna May WongWong was the first Chinese American film star in Hollywood, appearing in more than 60 movies and achieving international success in the face of racism and discrimination. Her coin shows her resting her head on her hand, surrounded by the round lights of a marquee sign.
This story originally appeared on the Morning Edition live blog.
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The first Maya Angelou Artist-In-Residence Award will be presented in the spring of 2022. Courtesy of Wake Forest Univierstiy.
Wake Forest University has established a new award inspired by the late author and civil rights activist Maya Angelou.
The Maya Angelou Artist-In-Residence Award will celebrate artists who reflect Angelou’s passions for creating, performing, and teaching.
Angelou wore many hats as a poet, actress, author, and activist. She was also an inspiration to several generations of students as a teacher and mentor at Wake Forest.
Now the university will pay her influence forward with the award celebrating people who have combined achievement in the arts with a commitment to improving the human condition, much in the spirit of the school’s motto, Pro Humanitate.
Angelou’s relationship with Wake Forest dates back several decades. She was named the University's first Reynolds Professor of American Studies in 1982 and continued teaching until her death in 2014.
According to a news release, recipients of the Artist-In-Residence Award will visit Wake Forest to engage and collaborate with students and faculty. The first award is expected to be made in the spring of 2022.
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dr. maya angelou #maya angelou #wake forest university
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Former AKA International President Julia Brogdon Purnell and HistoryMakers interviewer Larry Crowe. Photo courtesy of The HistoryMakers collection.
A national video and oral archive that celebrates African-American history is coming to the Triad. The organization The HistoryMakers has compiled more than 3,000 interviews totaling 10,000 hours of testimony recorded in hundreds of cities and towns across the U.S.
This week, it will honor Maya Angelou, author and historian John Hope Franklin, and attorney Julius Chambers, among others at the Forsyth County Public Library.
The HistoryMakers founder Julieanna Richardson. Photo courtesy of The HistoryMakers collection.
Founder Julieanna Richardson says she began The HistoryMakers to explore her own personal identity, and to spread the message of the black experience. She spoke with WFDD’s David Ford.
Interview Highlights On what drew The HistoryMakers to Winston-Salem:
So, we're coming there to explain who we are, to see what repositories have what about the black experience, [and] to see if we can help enhance what they have. Can we convince repositories to take other materials of the black community there so it will also be preserved? And can we also better represent the Piedmont area? We have a school that we've been working with. It's the Guilford Academy. We've been working with them for about six years, and they've been using our digital archive. In fact, they were using us to teach black boys to write. And the young people felt for the first time by hearing the stories they were motivated to do that. The other thing they were using the digital archive for was to teach vocabulary and context. And I thought that's such a brilliant idea. And so, we tout the Piedmont area because that was the only school in the country that we've had that was using the collection that way. Every time people hear about it they're fascinated.
On how black history education in schools changed since the 1970s:
It hasn't changed that much and that's the sad part. You know, I can't speak about the Piedmont area, [but] I can speak about Chicago where I am. About two years ago, I was presenting before a group of social studies teachers. I was showing our digital archive and I said, "So what do you teach? Do you teach the Great Migration?" And they were just sitting, and I said, "What do you teach?" [and] they said, "Slavery." I said, "But what else do you teach?" They said, "Slavery." And I was horrified. And what I'm finding young people tell me is that they learn about slavery, civil rights and that's about it. Now they'll learn also about President Barack Obama. There's just not a lot of instruction, so I thought things had progressed but they have not. You know people need to know where they come from. It's really important. It's sort of the root that helps the tree blossom.
On the progress being made by The HistoryMakers, and the urgency of this moment in history:
We're the largest attempt to record the black experience since the WPA Slave Narrative. And you know when you look, that's over 600 people who have passed that we interviewed and another 1,400 are age 70 and above. 99.5 percent of them would never have written their autobiography or had a biography written about them. And we remain as maybe the sole thing that reminds people that they existed. So, I am totally motivated now, because I believe that in the archives lie stories that show that we are totally of worth. And I want the young black kids to know their heritage. And I want the larger community to know the things that we've actually done and contributed to that far beyond Martin Luther King and Malcolm X and the names that we hear over and over again. So, I'm excited where our project is right now and its potential to change. And I see the hunger in a lot of young people in trying to find their identity. They did not know that the world will be like this. And a lot of things have frightened them about where we are and what maybe the older community did not do for them or prepare for them that they are being responsible for. But on the other hand, the division is something that I don't know how we bridge again. And that is the thing that we're going to have to change and work on in society, because a lot of damage is being done right now.
Editor's Note: This interview transcript was lightly edited for clarity.
Correction: A broadcast version of this story incorrectly stated the first name of Julieanna Richardson.
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the historymakers #maya angelou #forsyth county public library
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Several private events are planned this weekend at Wake Forest University to celebrate the legacy of Maya Angelou. KERI BROWN/WFDD
Wake Forest University will honor the legacy of Maya Angelou on Friday. The campus community is dedicating a new residence hall in her memory.
The famous poet, actress, author and civil rights activist had a close connection to the university. Angelou taught generations of Wake Forest students as the Reynolds Professor of American Studies from 1982 until her death in 2014.
The university is holding several private events this weekend to celebrate the new building, which officially opened last month. Those include a ribbon cutting ceremony today, and a reception for her former students and members of Angelou’s family.
The five-story brick building also contains a classroom, a parlor complete with a baby grand piano and study rooms painted with her favorite red color – claret.
Barbee Oakes is the chief diversity officer at Wake Forest and was a close friend of Angelou’s.
“We think of the students who will live in Angelou Hall as being ambassadors of Dr. Angelou because they will embody the spirit of what it is she wanted people to live by – the common humanity that we share, diversity and inclusion,” says Oakes.
The building will house only first year students this fall and the Office of Residence Life and Housing.
“She has had such an important legacy for teaching, dancing, [and] creativity," says Donna McGalliard, Dean of Residence Life and Housing at Wake Forest University. "What better space to name after her than a residence where all of those kinds of things, intellectual discourse, [and] friendships that are forming happen in a place that’s named after her?”
Mcgalliard says more touches will be added to the hall in the coming weeks. Angelou’s family is also donating sculptures from her former home on Bartram Road in Winston-Salem. Those will be displayed throughout the building and courtyard.
The 3 p.m. dedication ceremony on Friday will include remarks by Angelou’s grandson, Elliott Jones. Legendary singer and songwriter Valerie Ashford Simpson will perform a musical tribute. It will be livestreamed for the public.
Wake Forest University officials say Maya Angelou Hall will be the first building named for an African American and the second residence hall to bear the name of a female professor.
*Follow WFDD's Keri Brown on Twitter @kerib_news
maya angelou hall #maya angelou #wake forest university
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Acclaimed poet Maya Angelou knew how to appreciate a great steak.
Heidi Gutman / ABC via Getty Images
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This April marks the 20th anniversary of National Poetry Month, and here at The Salt, we wanted to celebrate with a selection of the sauciest, most scrumptious verses about food.
Gastronomy and poetry are a natural pairing. After all, both provide necessary nourishment. And as poet Tess Taylor told us last week, "Food — 'cultivation' — is the most basic part of 'culture,' the art of stability, the art of civilization." The whole process of growing and harvesting food, cooking it and savoring it has inspired generations of writers.
So, we asked you to share your favorite selections about farming and food — and we've gathered them up here.
Lots and lots of you recommended William Carlos Williams' sweet and short "This Is Just To Say":
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the iceboxand which
you were probably
saving
for breakfastForgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
"Persimmons" by Li-Young Lee is another lovely ode to fruit:
... Ripe ones are soft and brown-spotted.
Sniff the bottoms. The sweet one
will be fragrant. How to eat:
put the knife away, lay down newspaper.
Peel the skin tenderly, not to tear the meat.
Chew the skin, suck it,
and swallow. Now, eat
the meat of the fruit,
so sweet,
all of it, to the heart ...
As is Diane Ackerman's "The Consolation of Apricots":
... Somewhere between a peach and a prayer,
they taste of well water
and butterscotch and dried apples
and desert simooms and lust.Sweet with a twang of spice,
a ripe apricot is small enough to devour
as two hemispheres.
Ambiguity is its hallmark ...
And Matsuo Basho's haiku meditation on melons:
Coolness of the melons
flecked with mud
in the morning dew.
And Seamus Heaney's wistful "Blackberry Picking," which begins:
Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger
Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots
Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots ...
Fruits and veg are necessary for a balanced diet — and for a taste of the latter, The Salt's Maria Godoy loves Pablo Neruda's "Ode To The Onion":
Onion, luminous flask,
your beauty formed
petal by petal,
crystal scales expanded you
and in the secrecy of the dark earth
your belly grew round with dew.
Under the earth
the miracle
happened
and when your clumsy
green stem appeared,
and your leaves were born
like swords
in the garden ...
Of course, produce easily translates into sensual verse.
But sometimes we all crave something meatier. For that, we can turn to Maya Angelou — a woman who knew how to enjoy a good, hearty meal. (She even published a couple of cookbooks). Here's "The Health-Food Diner":
No sprouted wheat and soya shoots
And Brussels in a cake,
Carrot straw and spinach raw,
(Today, I need a steak).Not thick brown rice and rice pilaw
Or mushrooms creamed on toast,
Turnips mashed and parsnips hashed,
(I'm dreaming of a roast).Health-food folks around the world
Are thinned by anxious zeal,
They look for help in seafood kelp
(I count on breaded veal).No smoking signs, raw mustard greens,
Zucchini by the ton,
Uncooked kale and bodies frail
Are sure to make me runto
Loins of pork and chicken thighs
And standing rib, so prime,
Pork chops brown and fresh ground round
(I crave them all the time).Irish stews and boiled corned beef
and hot dogs by the scores,
or any place that saves a space
For smoking carnivores.
If that doesn't fill you up, here's Shel Silverstein's whimsical ditty on hotdogs.
Click here for a larger view.
2011 Evil Eye, LLC.
And Roger McGough's "Vinegar":
sometimes
i feel like a priest
in a fish & chips queue
quietly thinking
as the vinegar runs through
how nice it would be
to buy supper for two
As McGough so cleverly notes, food is the stuff that connects us — it carries emotion and memory. In that vein, here's an except from Robert Hass' "Meditation at Lagunitas":
... But I remember so much, the way her hands dismantled bread,
the thing her father said that hurt her, what
she dreamed. There are moments when the body is as numinous
as words, days that are the good flesh continuing.
Such tenderness, those afternoons and evenings,
saying blackberry, blackberry, blackberry.
And here is D.H. Lawrence, who shows us the best way to enjoy an apple — or any food, for that matter — in his poem "Mystic."
They call all experience of the senses mystic, when the experience is
considered.
So an apple becomes mystic when I taste in it
the summer and the snows, the wild welter of earth
and the insistence of the sun.All of which things I can surely taste in a good apple.
Though some apples taste preponderantly of water, wet and sour
and some of too much sun, brackish sweet
like lagoon water, that has been too much sunned.If I say I taste these things in an apple, I am called mystic, which
means a liar.
The only way to eat an apple is to hog it down like a pig
and taste nothing
that is real.But if I eat an apple, I like to eat it with all my senses awake.
Hogging it down I call the feeding of corpses.
We could go on, and on and on. But we won't — because honestly, all this food poetry is making us hungry.
If we missed any of your favorites, please do let is know in the comments, or on Twitter @NPRFood.
Copyright 2016 NPR. To see more, visit NPR.
food #news #arts & life #poetry #maya angelou #salt #pablo neruda #national poetry month #li-young lee #robert hass #basho #shel silverstein #diane ackerman #d.h. lawrence #seamus heaney
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The celebrated poet Maya Angelou crafted a number of lines that have resonated with her readers â but the one on this stamp, it turns out, isn't one of them.
AP
As Abraham Lincoln always said, "The trouble with quotes on the Internet is that you never know if they're accurate."
Well, no — barring a weird rift in time, he probably didn't say that. But when it comes to the quotations of other famous figures — and, it seems, even life offline — things occasionally get far murkier.
Just ask the U.S. Postal Service.
On Tuesday, the USPS unveiled a limited-edition stamp intended to honor the late poet Maya Angelou, featuring her beaming smile and a choice quotation to fill the frame. "A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer," reads the stamp, "it sings because it has a song."
A moving sentiment, to be sure, and one that gracefully dovetails with the title to Angelou's best-known work, her memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Perhaps for that reason, when that famous sentence gets uttered, Angelou's name often isn't far behind. Even President Obama reinforced the link in his opening remarks at the presentation of the 2013 National Medal of Arts and National Humanities Medal.
Cue the rain on the parade: On Monday, the day before the stamp's big reveal, The Washington Post confirmed that the quotation did not, in fact, originate with Maya Angelou. Rather, it was author Joan Walsh Anglund, whose 1967 book A Cup of Sun featured the line, only with the word "he" instead of "it."
First lady Michelle Obama and Oprah Winfrey, among other distinguished presenters, attend the unveiling of the Maya Angelou Forever Stamp on Tuesday.
Jacquelyn Martin/AP
USPS spokesman Mark Saunders responded to The Post, noting, "Had we known about this issue beforehand, we would have used one of [Angelou's] many other works. ... The sentence held great meaning for her and she is publicly identified with its popularity."
On Tuesday, David Partenheimer, another spokesman for the Postal Service, added: "The sentence was chosen to accompany her image on the stamp to reflect her passion for the written and spoken word."
Anglund, for her part, took the news amiably.
"It's an interesting connection, and interesting it would happen and already be printed and on her stamp," she told The Post. "I love her and all she's done, and I also love my own private thinking that also comes to the public because it comes from what I've been thinking and how I've been feeling."
The Internet, meanwhile, took the news as the Internet so frequently does — with a worldwide smirk and an armada of Photoshopped images. British newspaper The Telegraph compiled a few of the choicest nuggets, but for now, here's a personal favorite — and a caution that all would-be quoters might do well to remember:
That definitely isn't a Maya Angelou quote. pic.twitter.com/07QL8WnJCF
— Dave Itzkoff (@ditzkoff) April 7, 2015
Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.
news #books #arts & life #book news & features #maya angelou #usps #stamp
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Maurice Sendak stands with a character from his book Where the Wild Things Are in 2002.
Spencer Platt / Getty Images
The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.
In the more than two years since Maurice Sendak died, a dispute has simmered over the celebrated author and illustrator's wishes for the works he left behind. Now, the fate of that personal library will be settled in court.
The Rosenbach Museum and Library in Philadelphia has filed a lawsuit against Sendak's estate, alleging that the Sendak trustees have failed to comply with the terms of his will. In the will, according to the lawsuit, Sendak requests that much of his rare book collection — as well as many of his own writings and illustrations — remain in Philadelphia to be displayed at the museum, with which Sendak shared a decades-long relationship.
Although the will allows leeway for negotiation between both parties, talks between the Rosenbach and the executors of Sendak's will have failed to reach an agreement.
At the heart of the dispute lies two gems of Sendak's collection, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer: William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, and several books by Beatrix Potter, author of Peter Rabbit. The newspaper reports that the debate over the latter boils down to a question central in Sendak's own writing.
The suit argues that the estate doesn't intend to transfer to the Potter books because "they are children's books, not rare books," the Inquirer writes. "The Rosenbach calls that reasoning not only faulty but rife with irony: Sendak argued that divisions between adult and children's literature were invalid — in his work as well as that of others."
Filed in Connecticut, where Sendak lived, the lawsuit has an added wrinkle: a possible deadline. Sendak trustees are planning an auction in January. Although trustees have said none of the disputed items would be auctioned, according to the lawsuit, the Inquirer reports that the Rosenbach has nevertheless sought a court order to keep executors from transferring, disposing or distributing until a resolution is reached.
Asimov on HBO: The Wrap broke the news that Isaac Asimov's Foundation trilogy will be adapted for television. The site reports that the series will be written by Oscar-nominated screenwriter Jonathan Nolan and produced by HBO and Warner Bros. TV. And while representatives from the major players involved have yet to comment on the story, this has done little to slow the Internet's volcanic reaction to the news.
It Begins: Forget for a moment that it's only mid-November: With the same inexorable creep of holiday shopping commercials, the year-end "Best Of" lists have begun to unfurl already. And while we can count ourselves lucky these lists aren't quite so catchy as the standard-issue Christmas carol, still, it appears that there's already plenty of required reading on tap.
Amazon editors unveiled their 2014 Best Books of the Year, a list of 100 books topped by Celeste Ng's novel Everything I Never Told You. Rounding out the top three are All the Light We Cannot See, a novel by Anthony Doerr, and In the Kingdom of Ice, Hampton Sides' nonfiction account of polar exploration gone awry. (In case you're wondering, Publisher's Lunch points out that four books published by Hachette made the list.)
Not to be outdone, Publisher's Weekly had already announced its picks for the best books of 2014 — back on Halloween. Marlon James' A Brief History of Seven Killings, Lorrie Moore's Bark and Emmanuel Carrere's Limonov tops its list of 10.
On Your Marks: The National Book Foundation, GoodReads, Mashable and Penguin Random House have partnered to launch a National Readathon Day on Jan. 24, 2015. The event, which aims to raise funds for the NBF, invites people across the country to settle down with a book for a four-hour chunk, from noon to 4 p.m. that day, and to grab friends to sponsor them with donations while they do it.
'If You're Greedy, You're Set Up': Out of the archives, PBS dredged this 1970 conversation between Studs Terkel and Maya Angelou, who regaled Terkel with tales she says were told to her by con men when she was young.
To Finish Or Not To Finish, That Is The: Questioning your moral obligation to finish a book you've started even if you find it dreadful? Well, so are Juliet Lapidos in The Atlantic and Peter Damien on BookRiot. Not surprisingly, they come down on different sides of the divide — but their points might help better define your own plight, as you weigh whether to keep that book open or just put it down.
Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.
books #arts & life #book news & features #maya angelou #book news #isaac asimov #maurice sendak
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Former South African president Nelson Mandela. The 95-year-old will be buried Sunday in Pretoria.
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Dr. Maya Angelou recalls the kind spirit of a South African warrior.
Thousands of people from around the world continue paying last respects to Nelson Mandela. He died last week and his body is lying in state in Pretoria, South Africa. The 95-year-old will be buried Sunday, December 15.Dr. Maya Angelou first met Mandela in 1960 while she was living in Cairo, Egypt. Recently she spoke with WFDD’s Kathryn Mobley and described Mandela as a remarkable friend whose gentleness always amazed her.
mandela #maya angelou
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