M. Lynx Qualey
Less Enjoyable Screen Reading and Other Apocalypses
Last week, the UK’s National Literacy Trust released results of a survey of 35,000 UK children. Most of the headline-pullouts felt unremarkable (“on-screen reading overtakes reading in print”; “Children say they prefer to read on screen”; “4 out of 10 now own…
Literature in Prison
Mostly, the trope is annoying: “Juvenile offenders study Russian literature” and goodness sakes alive, lookie here, these [insert stereotype] kids are really getting something out of all that “literary fluff”! It would be more surprising, by far, if some young…
What Sort of Questions ‘Should’ You Ask at a Literary Event?
A week or so ago, I was sitting on a couch in Abu Dhabi, interviewing the Syrian novelist Nihad Sirees. We spoke for several hours: about our shared love of Egypt, about the difference between scriptwriting vs. novel-writing, about his…
‘We’re So Lucky’
Often, when we Americans leap into a discussion about “free speech” — a phrase that has become so over-stretched that it’s ceased to mean much of anything – we find ourselves responding with belly-rubbing complacency: “Ah, things sure are bad…
On Being (Re-)invited
A few days ago, I published a commentary on my dis-invitation from the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair. Yesterday, as I opened my computer feeling even more scattered than usual, I saw a message from a friend at the fair,…
