Featured series 
Tag: Writing
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Nation & World
Renaissance man
A veteran Italian-American chef, Rosario Del Nero rediscovers the joys of learning at the Extension School, and wins an academic prize.
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Nation & World
From bodysuits to bikinis
Library cataloger Marilyn Morgan is writing a book about American women and their bathing suits, and what that says about early 20th century cultural norms.
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Nation & World
Thompson wins writing grant
Harvard Review Editor Christina Thompson wins creative-writing fellowship to research her book project on how the Polynesians came to settle the Pacific region.
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Nation & World
Painting pictures in our minds
Nobel laureate in literature Orhan Pamuk nears the end of his six-lecture Norton series on the novel’s durable attractions.
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Nation & World
Radcliffe fellow Brown receives Whiting Writers’ Award
Jericho Brown, a Bunting Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute and assistant professor of English at the University of San Diego, will receive the 2009 Whiting Writers’ Award on Oct. 28 at a ceremony in New York City.
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Nation & World
Harvard buys Updike archive
Harvard University has acquired the manuscripts, correspondences, and other papers of John Updike, a celebrated member of the Class of 1954 who kept a Harvard library card and frequently visited the campus to research the contemporary culture that enlivened his acclaimed fiction.
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Nation & World
Child psychiatrist pens her past
Psychiatrist Nancy Rappaport uncovers a relationship with the mother she scarcely knew in her powerful familial memoir. Infused with accounts of treating her own teenage patients, Rappaport plumbs the bond between parents and children while closing in on healing.
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Nation & World
On the road in the fifth century: Visions of heaven, hell
During the fifth century, travelers began to depart China more frequently than ever before, venturing outward from medieval cities to explore lands in Central and South Asia. A range of individuals eagerly took to the road, writing extensively about their journeys and returning home with elaborate accounts.
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Nation & World
The Arsenale
“Provocative” — one of the most-used words to describe art — may be an understatement for “The Arsenale,” the thesis exhibition for students in the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies, held at the Carpenter Center.
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Nation & World
Not so elementary, my dear Watson
For more than a century, Sherlock Holmes, the most famous creation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, has captivated mystery fans, literary scholars, and researchers of virtually every stripe. But, as dozens of Doyle scholars and Sherlockians showed during a recent three-day symposium at Harvard, the Holmes stories represent only a small part of Doyle’s contribution…
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Nation & World
Writers at risk talk about their lives
For some, words are both a way of life and a way of risking life. Last year, 877 writers and journalists around the world were killed, jailed, or attacked.
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Nation & World
Harvard has new poetry Web site
On an abnormally sweltering spring day, one would expect to see patches of Harvard students sunbathing in the Yard, not reading poetry inside Lamont Library. But a throng of students, faculty, and staff gathered inside the modest-sized Woodberry Poetry Room on a sultry Tuesday (April 28) evening to celebrate the release of Poetry@Harvard, a new…
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Nation & World
Inaugural Playwrights’ Festival
Eleven undergraduate playwrights will present staged readings of their plays as part of the inaugural Harvard Playwrights’ Festival, held April 23-26 in New College Theatre. The plays will be performed with the collaboration of professional directors, graduate actors, and dramaturges from the Institute for Advanced Theatre Training.
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Nation & World
Roughing it on Great Brewster
On the hot day of July 15, 1891, four women set off for the adventure of a lifetime in Boston Harbor. For nearly two weeks the quartet — well-educated, upper-class women from the Lowell area — “roughed it” in a quaint yet ramshackle cottage on remote Great Brewster Island, a place they considered “an enchanted…
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Nation & World
Jehn is appointed director of the Harvard College Writing Program
Thomas R. Jehn, an expert in writing pedagogy, has been appointed Sosland Director in the Harvard College Writing Program, effective immediately.
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Nation & World
Pros teaching prose
Clicking keyboards provide a soundtrack to the semester’s end, as students put finishing touches on term papers, theses, dissertations, and the like. But amid the flurry of traditional writing assignments, there are other projects afoot. Short stories, for example. Screenplays. Fiction manuscripts. Personal essays.
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Nation & World
Poet/critics and the state of the art
A triumvirate of prominent poet-critics – each with strong Harvard ties – took on the meaning of contemporary poetry last week. And despite a lively discussion, none of them provided a comprehensive definition.
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Nation & World
Gail Mazur reads at Radcliffe
After removing her soaked red sneakers, Radcliffe Fellow Gail Mazur read aloud from new poems Monday (April 6) in dry black socks. The poet was undeterred by the onslaught of gray rain that thrashed Radcliffe Gymnasium’s windows — a fitting backdrop for Mazur’s charged, emotional poems.
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Nation & World
Atkins, Dennehy to perform poems of T.S. Eliot
In the first lines of “The Waste Land,” a touchstone of modernist poetry from 1922, T.S. Eliot offers an ambiguous view of the very month we are in: April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain.
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Nation & World
History of a ‘scribal machine’
Starting in the 1920s, Chinese writer Lin Yutang earned a reputation as an urbane essayist and translator who moved easily between the literary cultures of the East and West.
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Nation & World
Yu Hua reads work, participates in star-studded panel at Fairbank event
It’s strange to imagine your dentist as one of the most interesting and controversial novelists of the 21st century. But that’s just what Yu Hua is. Or was — the former dentist who admitted, more frighteningly, that he possessed little formal dental training, recently derided his former profession to a New York Times reporter, saying,…
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Nation & World
When Boston was the hub of the literary world
Matthew Pearl, author of “The Dante Club” and “The Poe Shadow,” wove an engaging tale of Boston’s literary legacy — one significantly and curiously shaped by 19th century copyright laws.
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Nation & World
Mothers in fiction, mothers in fact
In 1930, the French author Colette published the novel “Sido” and bound the first copy with swatches of blue fabric cut from her late mother’s favorite dress.
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Nation & World
Briggs-Copeland reading features poets Klink and Richards
Tonight (Feb. 19) at 7, Houghton Library hosts Harvard’s first Briggs-Copeland Poetry Reading. The event, held in the Edison and Newman Room, will feature readings by Joanna Klink and Peter Richards, two of Harvard’s six Briggs-Copeland Lecturers. Bret Anthony Johnston, director of the creative writing program in the Department of English, will provide an introduction.
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Nation & World
Detroit Free Press recognized with Worth Bingham Prize
For their comprehensive series “A Mayor in Crisis,” Detroit Free Press staff writers Jim Schaefer and M.L. Elrick, in addition to their colleagues, are the winners of the 2008 Worth Bingham Prize for Investigative Journalism, presented by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard.
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Nation & World
Prolific poet John Ashbery ’49 will receive 2009 Harvard Arts Medal
Pulitzer Prize-winning poet John Ashbery ’49 will receive the 2009 Harvard Arts Medal in a ceremony kicking off the Arts First festivities on April 30.
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Nation & World
Rubén Blades donates papers, recordings
He’s attained fame as an award-winning actor and musician, founded a political party and run for president of his native Panama and served as the Panamanian minister of tourism, but now Rubén Blades LL.M. ’85 will add another credit to his resume: Harvard College Library benefactor.
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Nation & World
Du Bois exhibit a first in U.S.
The images on the walls of the intimate gallery at 104 Mt. Auburn St. are hauntingly evocative. In “Black Friar,” a hooded figure stares out of the darkness, his gaze intense and unsettled. An opposing image, “Every Moment Counts,” offers a modern approach to Jesus, as a beloved disciple leans against the body of the…
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Nation & World
Vivid scrolls from Japan tell timeless stories
For nearly a decade, Melissa McCormick, John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Humanities, has been absorbed in the study of elaborate works of fiction. The themes she encounters — love, temptation, even family drama — are timeless. The format — narrow horizontal scrolls of mulberry paper, with hand-painted images and columns of calligraphy —…