Flavorwire Interview: National Book Award Winner James McBride on Finding Humor in History’s Darkest Moments

By Jason Diamond on Dec 10, 2013 - Flavorwire

When I arrive at James McBride’s office in Hell’s Kitchen, the recent National Book Award winner for fiction is living it up, mopping the floor of the small workspace. His last three books, a co-writing credit on Spike Lee’s film Red Hook Summer, and a whole bunch of music have been achieved between these four walls — that’s a lot of history.
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The Best Quotes About Writing From Literature Laureates’ Nobel Prize Speeches

By Michelle Dean on Dec 10, 2013 - Flavorwire

As Alice Munro’s daughter is in Stockholm today collecting her mother’s Nobel Prize for Literature — there won’t be a speech; the frail Munro recorded a podcast instead — we thought we’d offer some of quotes from our favorite Laureates of years past. Here’s a thing I noticed in compiling this list, however: a lot of Nobel lectures are pompous bores! There’s a lot of theory in them sometimes! No good, old-fashioned storytelling about storytelling. Well, except for these people, who spoke with more eloquence and fewer references to French post-structuralists
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