An Irish scandal comes into elegantly restrained focus in a winner of the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction — Nearly a decade ago, a historian made public her horrific discovery that 796 infants had died and were buried in secret graves near an Irish home for unwed mothers and their babies between 1925 and 1961. The shocking finding sparked worldwide outrage. It led Ireland to set up a national…

Why two gentle amphibian friends still enchant young readers — Arnold Lobel called Beatrix Potter his artistic mother. If that’s true, he deserves a Son of the Year award for Frog and Toad Are Friends. Potter casts a long shadow over stories about animals who act and dress like humans but retain characteristics of their species. Artists often try to…

The vices of my region are spreading. Its virtues aren’t — Each time I vote in Alabama, I see two kinds of tables I never saw at polling places in my native New Jersey. At the first, someone checks my required photo ID. At the second, volunteers hand out free bottled water and snacks, such as Nutri-Grain bars, bags of Fritos…

Brass marching bands are a delight of the Mardi Gras season. Toes are tapping in the Mardi Gras belt, the coastal region that extends roughly from Pensacola, Florida, to Galveston, Texas. The parades begin after Twelfth Night, the Feast of the Epiphany, on Jan. 6. But they go into overdrive…

I’m probably not seeing your posts if you’ve done these — Are your posts getting fewer claps or comments than you’d hoped? It may be happening because you haven’t hit your stride or found your voice on Medium — and you’ll start getting more when you do. …

They saw ‘Charlotte’s Web’ as ‘too sad’ for their highest honor, and they’ve blown it with other books, too — On Monday the American Library Association announced the winners of the 2023 Newbery and Caldecott medals, which all but guarantee that the honored children’s books will live on in libraries for generations. But sometimes the library association has blown it in handing out its top prizes. The Newbery (for children’s…

7 secrets to the success of a writer whose books outsold the Bible last year — Colleen Hoover’s novels are often called “trauma porn.” This is unfair to porn. A typical porn catalog has films about people of varied ages, races, and sexual tastes. Hoover’s novels are about young white women who fall for young white men. …

Why critics love the game and its new HBO adaptation — Critics are turning cartwheels over The Last of Us. Just this week, Time called the game “high art, perhaps the greatest video game ever created” and the new HBO series based on it “the best game adaptation ever.” What makes The Last of Us unique? The premise of the series…

One of the world’s finest novelists shows why awards judges have showered her with honors — In a good novel, every sentence pulls its weight. In a great one, every sentence pulls two or three times that: It reveals character, advances the plot, and evokes a time or place, or otherwise does double or triple duty. Claire Keegan’s fourth book isn’t a novel but a story…