“It has been said that loneliness is the great American malady. What is the nature of this loneliness? It would seem essentially to be a quest for identity.”—Carson McCullers’s essay “The Nature of Loneliness”
literature
Gabriel García Márquez’s life in 100 pictures
In August 2016, I joined the Ransom Center as a graduate student assistant from The University of Texas at Austin’s School of Information to digitize the Gabriel García Márquez papers. [Read more…] about Gabriel García Márquez’s life in 100 pictures
Gabriel García Márquez’s republic of letters
I have always loved to catalog presentation copies of books—those given as a gift from one person to another, usually with a signature or inscription. They represent a tiny piece of the people involved, and allow me to feel a connection to some of my favorite authors. Gabriel García Márquez’s library was no exception. [Read more…] about Gabriel García Márquez’s republic of letters
Of grieving and goshawks: An interview with H is for Hawk’s Helen Macdonald
Helen Macdonald is the author of H is for Hawk (Grove Atlantic), out this month in paperback. H is for Hawk landed on more than 25 book of the year lists and was an instant New York Times bestseller. Macdonald, a falconer and naturalist, writes about training a goshawk as a challenge to [Read more…] about Of grieving and goshawks: An interview with H is for Hawk’s Helen Macdonald
African American artists and writers in the Limited Editions Club
The stories I selected span three decades and show (Zora Neal) Hurston’s diversity in writing styles and subject matter. I created my illustrations from fragments of fabric, paper and faded photos. The layering of images, patterns and textures evoke the feeling of memory and old tales retold. So they become, like the stories, “Bookmarks in the Pages of Life.”—Betye Saar, artist’s afterword to Bookmarks in the Pages of Life [Read more…] about African American artists and writers in the Limited Editions Club
Fellows Find: Manuscripts reveal internal battles of Civil War novelists writing outside the “moonlight and magnolias” school
Dr. Niall Munro, Senior Lecturer in American Literature at Oxford Brookes University, was a fellow at the Ransom Center during the summer of 2015. His research was supported by the Fred W. Todd Southern Literature Endowment Fund. Munro is at work on a book entitled “Our only ‘felt’ history”: American modernism and the Civil War. While at the Ransom Center, Munro accessed the collections of Evelyn Scott and Stark Young. [Read more…] about Fellows Find: Manuscripts reveal internal battles of Civil War novelists writing outside the “moonlight and magnolias” school