A Swim in a Pond in the Rain In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life

DESCRIPTION
For the last twenty years, George Saunders has been teaching a class on the Russian short story to his MFA students at Syracuse University. In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, he shares a version of that class with us, offering some of what he and his students have discovered together over the years. Paired with iconic short stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol, the seven essays in this book are intended for anyone interested in how fiction works and why it’s more relevant than ever in these turbulent times.

In his introduction, Saunders writes, “We’re going to enter seven fastidiously constructed scale models of the world, made for a specific purpose that our time maybe doesn’t fully endorse but that these writers accepted implicitly as the aim of art—namely, to ask the big questions, questions like, How are we supposed to be living down here? What were we put here to accomplish? What should we value? What is truth, anyway, and how might we recognize it?” He approaches the stories technically yet accessibly, and through them explains how narrative functions; why we stay immersed in a story and why we resist it; and the bedrock virtues a writer must foster. The process of writing, Saunders reminds us, is a technical craft, but also a way of training oneself to see the world with new openness and curiosity.

A Swim in a Pond in the Rain is a deep exploration not just of how great writing works but of how the mind itself works while reading, and of how the reading and writing of stories make genuine connection possible.

AUTHOR
George Saunders is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of ten books, including Lincoln in the Bardo, which won the Man Booker Prize; Congratulations, by the way; Tenth of December, a finalist for the National Book Award; The Braindead Megaphone; and the critically acclaimed short story collections CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, Pastoralia, and In Persuasion Nation. He teaches in the creative writing program at Syracuse University.

DETAILS
Paperback432 pages
Publisher:Random House Publishing Group
Published:April 12, 2022
Subjects:Literary Criticism
Short Stories
Russian & Former Soviet Union
Language Arts & Disciplines
Study & Teaching
EAN:9781984856xxx

Banned Books Week: Banned Censored and or Challenged

Books can connect us culturally regardless of gender race or economic status. As an advocate for storytelling through all mediums of art, including photography, in addition to being an outspoken critic of censorship, I am happy to present a list of this years banned, censored or challenged books.

Banned Books Week is an annual celebration of the freedom to read. In 1982, Banned Books Week was created in response to a rise in the number of book challenges in schools, bookstores, and libraries. It is traditionally observed during the last week of September and stresses the significance of free and open access to information. Banned Books Week brings together the whole book community — libraries, booksellers, publishers, journalists, educators, and readers of all types and induces book culture— to advocate for the freedom to explore and express ideas, even if they are deemed unusual or unpopular by some.

At the 1965 American Library Association Midwinter Meeting preconference in Washington, DC, the Intellectual Freedom Committee (IFC) recommended an ALA unit be established to “promote and protect the interests of intellectual freedom.” Among its interim objectives was to create “positive mechanisms” that could defend intellectual freedom, collaborate with state intellectual freedom committees, and establish relationships with other First Amendment groups.

Judith F. Krug was a librarian, freedom of speech proponent, and critic of censorship. Krug became director of the Office for Intellectual Freedom at the American Library Associationin 1967. In 1969, she joined the Freedom to Read Foundation as its executive director. Krug co-founded Banned Books Week in 1982. Watch this video of Krug talking about intellectual freedom in 2002. National Council of Teachers of English

Banned Books Week Sept 26th - Oct 2nd
Book Titles within the 10 Most Challenged Books of 2021

“Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You” by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi
Reasons: Banned and challenged because of author’s public statements, and because of claims that the book contains “selective storytelling incidents” and does not encompass racism against all people.

“George” by Alex Gino
Reasons: Challenged, banned, and restricted for LGBTQIA+ content, conflicting with a religious viewpoint, and not reflecting “the values of our community”.

“Something Happened in Our Town: A Child’s Story about Racial Injustice” by Marianne Celano, Marietta Collins, and Ann Hazzard
Reasons: Challenged for “divisive language” and because it was thought to promote anti-police views

“All American Boys” by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely
Reasons: Banned and challenged for profanity, drug use, and alcoholism, and because it was thought to promote anti-police views, contain divisive topics, and be “too much of a sensitive matter right now”

“Of Mice and Men” by John Steinbeck
Reasons: Banned and challenged for racial slurs and racist stereotypes, and their negative effect on students.

“Speak” by Laurie Halse Anderson
Reasons: Banned, challenged, and restricted because it was thought to contain a political viewpoint and it was claimed to be biased against male students, and for the novel’s inclusion of rape and profanity.

“To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee
Reasons: Banned and challenged for racial slurs and their negative effect on students, featuring a “white savior” character, and its perception of the Black experience.

“The Hate You Give” by Angie Thomas
Reasons: Challenged for profanity, and it was thought to promote an anti-police message.

“The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison “Speak” by Laurie Halse Anderson
Reasons: Banned and challenged because it was considered sexually explicit and depicts child sexual abuse.

“The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” by Sherman Alexie
Reasons: Banned and challenged for profanity, sexual references, and allegations of sexual misconduct by the author.

Julian Lucas, is fine art photographer, photojournalist, and creative strategist. Julian also works as a housing specialist which, includes linking homeless veterans to housing. Julian has lived in Chicago, Inglewood, Portland, and the suburbs of Los Angeles County including Pomona.

Philosophy, Pussycats, & Porn

Description
Philosophy, Pussycats, & Porn is a series of essays, blog posts, and stories surveying more than a decade of poignant journalistic accounts from internationally recognized writer, actor, and pornographer Stoya. Stoya provides crucial examinations of systemic biases toward sex workers and how sexuality is reflected in society. Stoya often points her journalistic lens inward, providing us with personal, illustriously detailed stories of her life, her collaborators, and how she has built a flourishing media haven in the face of a culture that is still learning how to handle public discourses on sex work.

Author
Stoya has been a pornographer since 2006 and a writer since 2012. She has written for the New York Times, the Guardian, Playboy, and others. She has acted in Serbian sci-fi feature Ederlezi Rising and two of Dean Haspiel’s plays, in Brooklyn and Manhattan. She lives with two cats and a platonic domestic partner named Steve.

Capital Hates Everyone

Why we must reject the illusory consolations of technology and choose revolution over fascism.

We are living in apocalyptic times. In Capital Hates Everyone, famed sociologist Maurice Lazzarato points to a stark choice emerging from the magma of today's world events: fascism or revolution. Fascism now drives the course of democracies as they grow less and less liberal and increasingly subject to the law of capital. Since the 1970s, Lazzarato writes, capital has entered a logic of war. It has become, by the power conferred on it by financialization, a political force intent on destruction. Lazzarato urges us to reject the illusory consolations of a technology-abetted "new" kind of capitalism and choose revolution over fascism.

Author
Maurizio Lazzarato is a sociologist and philosopher in Paris. He is the author of The Making of the Indebted Man, Governing by Debt, and Signs and Machines: Capitalism and the Production of Subjectivity, all published by Semiotext.

The Ethical Slut, Third Edition: A Practical Guide to Polyamory, Open Relationships, and Other Freedoms in Sex and Love

The classic guide to love, sex, and intimacy beyond the limits of conventional monogamy has been fully updated to reflect today’s modern attitudes and the latest information on nontraditional relationships.

“One of the most useful relationship books you could ever read, no matter what your lifestyle choices. It’s chock-full of great information about communication, jealousy, asking for what you want, and maintaining a relationship with integrity.”—Annie Sprinkle, PhD, sexologist and author of Dr. Sprinkle’s Spectacular Sex

For 20 years The Ethical Slut—widely known as the “Poly Bible”—has dispelled myths and showed curious readers how to maintain a successful polyamorous lifestyle through open communication, emotional honesty, and safer sex practices. The third edition of this timeless guide to the ethics of relationships, communication, and sex has been revised to include:

• Interviews with poly millennials (young people who have grown up without the prejudices their elders encountered regarding gender, orientation, sexuality, and relationships)
• Tributes to polyamory pioneers
• Tools for conflict resolution and instructions on how to improve interpersonal dynamics
• New sidebars on topics such as asexuality, sex workers, LGBTQ terminology, and ways polys can connect and thrive

The authors also include new content addressing nontraditional relationships beyond the polyamorous paradigm of “more than two”: couples who don't live together, couples who don't have sex with each other, nonparallel arrangements, couples with widely divergent sex styles, power disparities, and cross-orientation relationships, while utilizing nonbinary gender language and new terms that have come into common usage since the last edition.

Author
Janet W. Hardy is the author of more than ten books and the founder of Greenery Press, a now defunct publisher specializing in sexually adventurous books. She has an MFA in creative writing from St. Mary's College, and swore off monogamy in 1987.

Dossie Easton is a licensed marriage and family therapist specializing in alternative sexualities and relationships, with twenty years of experience counseling open relationships. She is the author of four other books, and has been an ethical slut since 1969.

Cunt, 20th Anniversary Edition

Description
An ancient title of respect for women, the word "cunt" long ago veered off this noble path. Inga Muscio traces the road from honor to expletive, giving women the motivation and tools to claim "cunt" as a positive and powerful force in their lives. In this fully revised edition, she explores, with candidness and humor, such traditional feminist issues as birth control, sexuality, jealousy between women, and prostitution with a fresh attitude for a new generation of women. Sending out a call for every woman to be the Cuntlovin' Ruler of Her Sexual Universe, Muscio stands convention on its head by embracing all things cunt-related. This edition is fully revised with updated resources, a new foreword from sexual pioneer Betty Dodson, and a new afterword by the author.

Author
Inga Muscio is a writer and public speaker addressing the issues of sexism, racism, sexual violence, and feminist issues. She teaches writing and appears frequently on college campuses. She lives in Seattle.

Religion and the Rise of Capitalism

Description
Critics of contemporary economics complain that belief in free markets--among economists as well as many ordinary citizens--is a form of religion. And, it turns out, that in a deeper, more historically grounded sense there is something to that idea. Contrary to the conventional historical view of economics as an entirely secular product of the Enlightenment, Benjamin M. Friedman demonstrates that religion exerted a powerful influence from the outset. Friedman makes clear how the foundational transition in thinking about what we now call economics, beginning in the eighteenth century, was decisively shaped by the hotly contended lines of religious thought within the English-speaking Protestant world. Beliefs about God-given human character, about the after-life, and about the purpose of our existence, were all under scrutiny in the world in which Adam Smith and his contemporaries lived. Friedman explores how those debates go far in explaining the puzzling behavior of so many of our fellow citizens whose views about economic policies--and whose voting behavior--seems sharply at odds with what would be to their own economic benefit. Illuminating the origins of the relationship between religious thinking and economic thinking, together with its ongoing consequences, Friedman provides invaluable insights into our current economic policy debates and demonstrates ways to shape more functional policies for all citizens.

Author
BENJAMIN M. FRIEDMAN is the William Joseph Maier Professor of Political Economy, and formerly chairman of the Department of Economics, at Harvard University, where he has now taught for nearly half a century. Mr. Friedman's two previous general interest books are Day of Reckoning: The Consequences of American Economic Policy Under Reagan and After, and The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth. He has also written extensively on issues of economic policy, for both economists and economic policymakers, and he is a frequent contributor to national publications, especially The New York Review of Books. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.