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Library of America @libraryofamerica.bsky.social · 1d

A clowder of advance readers got their paws on @ursulakleguin.com’s Book of Cats (yes, sitting on top of a book counts as reading for these little guys). Explore this full-color album of cat-centric poems, cartoons, and prose pieces, in bookstores today. loa.org/books/ursula-k-le-guins-book-of-cats/

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Library of America @libraryofamerica.bsky.social · 1d

Original master of the macabre Edgar Allan Poe died on this day in 1849 in fittingly mysterious style: delirious, wearing someone else’s clothes, Poe was hospitalized for apparent intoxication in Baltimore but rapidly deteriorated, exclaiming “Lord, help my poor soul” before passing on October 7.

Edgar Allan Poe - Library of America

www.loa.org

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Library of America @libraryofamerica.bsky.social · 2d

On @literaryhub.bsky.social, Christopher Spaide reflects on the words of his teacher Helen Vendler, whose final essays appear in a new LOA volume. The goal, he writes, is not to look for the easy-to-grasp features of a poem, but “to strive to inhabit every poem in all its standoffish singularity.”

“Inhabiting the Poem.” Seven Poetry Collections to Read This October

“What was the work the poet was demanding of me? It was to inhabit the poem, to live willingly in its world.” Those sentences were written by my late teacher Helen Vendler, and arrive in the second…

lithub.com

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Library of America @libraryofamerica.bsky.social · 4d

Why does Peanuts continue to compel such fandom around the world, 75 years after its debut? Andrew Blauner, editor of The Peanuts Papers, joined @usatoday.com's The Excerpt to share his take alongside other writers and cartoonists who contributed to LOA's anthology on the immortal comic.

SPECIAL | Peanuts turns 75 and still speaks to the child in all of us

For 75 years, Charles Schultz’s Peanuts gang has reflected our humor and hope, as well as our struggle to navigate some of life’s everyday curveballs. How is it that the characters he created so poign...

art19.com

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Library of America @libraryofamerica.bsky.social · 5d

“‘I am a genius of a writer’, Plath had written to her [mother] a month earlier. ‘I am writing the best poems of my life; they will make my name.’” In @thetls.bsky.social, Seamus Perry examines the brief, incandescent career of Sylvia Plath, with a nod to LOA’s recently published I Am the Arrow.

Lioness of God

“Well, I have finished a 2nd book of poems in this last month”, Sylvia Plath wrote home to her mother on November, 1962, “30 new poems.” Her first volume, The Colossus, had appeared two years before a...

www.the-tls.com

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Library of America @libraryofamerica.bsky.social · 6d

Charles Schulz hated the name Peanuts, but that didn’t stop his 4-panel strip from taking over the world. The iconic comic, which debuted in newspapers 75 years ago today, ran for 50 years, making it, in the words of @macleans.bsky.social, “arguably the longest story ever told by one human being.”

The Peanuts Papers: Writers and Cartoonists on Charlie Brown, Snoopy & the Gang, and the Meaning of Life - Library of America

“A heartwarming tribute to Schulz’s inimitable strip and the influence it had on its everyday audience.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review) “This charming, searching book . . . is one of the more s...

www.loa.org

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Library of America @libraryofamerica.bsky.social · 8d

On @wellreadnaturalist.bsky.social, a shoutout to our forthcoming Rachel Carson boxed set. “Her work and her stalwart determination to bring what she had discovered to the attention of the public...have made her an inspiration to conservationists, environmentalists, and naturalists ever since.”

The Rachel Carson Collection Boxed Set

This coming October, The Library of America will publish a new boxed set of their Rachel Carson Collection. I doubt that most regular readers of "The Well-read Naturalist" need any introduction to Rac...

www.wellreadnaturalist.com

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Library of America @libraryofamerica.bsky.social · 9d

Reading Jim Thompson is like “being trapped in a bomb shelter with a chatty maniac who also happens to be the air raid warden,” wrote Robert Polito of the genius crime writer, born 119 years ago this September. Look for a collection of five of Thompson’s shocking best out from LOA in Spring 2026.

Original paperback covers of Jim Thompson novels

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Library of America @libraryofamerica.bsky.social · 12d

The revered author @ursulakleguin.com had nearly two dozen cats throughout her life, and they left indelible pawprints on her work and imagination. On our website, we present mini-biographies of Le Guin’s feline companions, excerpted from the soon-to-be-released Ursula K. Le Guin’s Book of Cats.

“Fellow Beings”: The Many Lives of Ursula K. Le Guin’s Cats - Library of America

Cats were community to Ursula K. Le Guin. The beloved author, perhaps best known for her influential speculative fiction such as the Hainish cycle and The Lathe of Heaven, also possessed an earthbound...

www.loa.org

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Library of America @libraryofamerica.bsky.social · 13d

“[T]he presence alone of Faulkner in our midst makes a great difference in what the writer can and cannot permit himself to do,” wrote Flannery O’Connor of the Nobel Prize-winning creator of Yoknapatawpha County, born on this day in 1897. Explore Faulkner’s peerless literary legacy on loa.org.

William Faulkner - Library of America

www.loa.org

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Library of America @libraryofamerica.bsky.social · 14d

“His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly's wings,” wrote Ernest Hemingway of his friend F. Scott Fitzgerald, born OTD in 1896. Eighty-five years after his death at age 44, Fitzgerald stands as arguably the quintessential American writer. loa.org/writers/210

F. Scott Fitzgerald - Library of America

www.loa.org

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Library of America @libraryofamerica.bsky.social · 15d

Don’t miss our fall preview sale, going on now through Friday, 9/26. Get 15% off all LOA books and sets, including new releases like our single-volume edition of Octavia E. Butler’s Xenogenesis Trilogy, Ursula K. Le Guin’s Book of Cats, and the works of playwright John Guare. Visit loa.org/books.

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Library of America @libraryofamerica.bsky.social · 16d

A huge thanks to everyone who came out to the @bkbookfest.bsky.social this past weekend and stopped by LOA’s booth! We had a wonderful time meeting fellow mega-fans of great literature, chatting about our books, and enjoying the beautiful September weather. Check out some pictures from the event!

Library of America at the Brooklyn Book Festival, 9/21/25

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Library of America @libraryofamerica.bsky.social · 19d

Patricia Lockwood is reading LOA’s Wallace Stevens collection in a new @nytimes.com By the Book. “The discouraging thing about writing criticism sometimes is the response: Now I never have to read anything by this person,” she says. “But I don’t write about writers who aren’t worth my attention.”

Patricia Lockwood Craves an Easier Way to Eat While Reading

www.nytimes.com

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Library of America @libraryofamerica.bsky.social · 20d

Zora Neale Hurston’s magisterial novel Their Eyes Were Watching God was published 88 years ago. Written over seven weeks while Hurston conducted field work in Haiti, the book contains, in the words of Henry Louis Gates, Jr., “the greatest synesthesia in the history of African American literature.”

“Funny thing happens in the life of a trope”: Henry Louis Gates, Jr., on W.E.B. Du Bois and Zora Neale Hurston - Library of America

The following remarks were given by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., at LOA’s 40th anniversary gala reception on May 1, 2023. For more on the event, including videos, photos, and transcripts of featured speech...

www.loa.org

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Library of America @libraryofamerica.bsky.social · 21d

Ursula K. Le Guin’s Book of Cats tote bags are in, and we’re happy to report they can comfortably fit four or five LOA volumes, a small grocery run, or one full-sized cat. Find us at the Brooklyn Book Festival this Sunday to get yours (booths 405 & 406)! www.loa.org/books/ursula...

Ursula K. Le Guin Book of Cats tote bag, and cat in same tote bag.

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Library of America @libraryofamerica.bsky.social · 21d

With Gilmore Girls back on Netflix, we’ve been seeing a surge of people asking about our Dawn Powell volumes (sample below). As Rory says in S2Ep20, “She wrote 16 amazing novels, 9 plays, and there are some who actually claim that it was Powell who made the jokes that Dorothy Parker got credit for.”

Note inquiring about LOA's Dawn Powell volumes from a reference in Gilmore Girls

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Library of America @libraryofamerica.bsky.social · 22d

Farewell to iconic actor and director Robert Redford, who played perhaps the greatest on-screen characterization of Jay Gatsby in the 1974 film version of Fitzgerald’s famous novel, with a screenplay by Francis Ford Coppola. Here he is opposite Mia Farrow, who starred as Daisy in the adaptation.

Robert Redford and Mia Farrow in the 1974 film version of The Great Gatsby (Fair Use)

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Library of America @libraryofamerica.bsky.social · 22d

On our website, read a tribute to Menashe with reflections from critics, colleagues, and former students, plus a never-before-published version of one of his last poems. www.loa.org/news-and-vie...

“Language Intense and Clear as Diamonds”: Poet Samuel Menashe’s Centenary - Library of America

Inklings Inklings sans ink Cling to the dry Point of the pen Whose stem I mouth Not knowing when The truth will out From his three-bedroom cold-water 39-dollar-a-month apartment in New York City where...

www.loa.org

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Library of America @libraryofamerica.bsky.social · 22d

Today marks the centenary of Samuel Menashe, author of (very) short poems, winner of the first Neglected Masters Award from the Poetry Foundation, and a brilliantly unclassifiable voice. “The struggle is against too many words!” he declared in this charming 2009 @wnyc.org profile.

Samuel, The Concise Poet

YouTube video by WNYC

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Library of America @libraryofamerica.bsky.social · 23d

Playwright John Logan shares his love for Leatherstocking Tales author James Fenimore Cooper, born OTD in 1789: “What draws me to Cooper isn’t the action, it’s the elegy. Something beautiful was passing away, something uniquely American, something irreplaceable. And Cooper noted it and mourned it.”

John Logan on James Fenimore Cooper: “Dive in and get reading” - Library of America

Tony Award–winning playwright John Logan is currently in the news for his latest project, Moulin Rouge! The Musical, now in previews on Broadway prior to its official opening on July 25. John Logan. (...

loa.org

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Reposted by Library of America

Alissa Wilkinson @alissawilkinson.bsky.social · 27d

I'm teaching this online seminar on some of Joan Didion's essays with @libraryofamerica.bsky.social, beginning September 29. Four sessions, 75 mins each. We'll be talking about some of her most prescient essays, which I think we should be reading right now. Come join.
www.loa.org/news-and-vie...

Register Now: Joan Didion: The Art of Storytelling, with Alissa Wilkinson - Library of America

Joan Didion remains one of the defining writers of our time. Her voice on the page, the way it addresses the world and the self, resonates deeply with the truth of contemporary experience and has made...

www.loa.org

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Library of America @libraryofamerica.bsky.social · 27d

Last night, LOA LIVE welcomed four distinguished scholars for a scintillating discussion of Alexis de Tocqueville’s masterpiece of political thought, Democracy in America. Watch the full panel featuring @jbf1755.bsky.social, Steven Hahn, James T. Kloppenberg, and Olivier Zunz on our YouTube channel.

Reading Democracy in America Now

YouTube video by Library of America

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Library of America @libraryofamerica.bsky.social · 28d

Georgia Douglas Johnson, a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance, was born 145 years ago. A prolific playwright, she hosted her “Saturday Salons” in Washington, DC, for more than 40 years, welcoming poets and writers including Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, Alain Locke, and Jessie Redmon Fauset.

Georgia Douglas Johnson and the Washington, DC, house where she hosted the S Street Salon (CC BY-SA 3.0)

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Library of America @libraryofamerica.bsky.social · 29d

“These sparkling essays take readers inside the lives and works of the poets you’ll encounter in this superb collection.” In @daytondailynews.com, praise for revered poetry critic Helen Vendler’s final book, Inhabit the Poem, out this fall from LOA. www.daytondailynews.com/lifestyles/b...

Book review: Discovering what makes poems pulsate with living heartbeats

In 2019 when Yale Professor Harold Bloom, probably the most famous literary critic in the English-speaking world, died at the age of 89, I wondered, who will assume his mantle as our leading interpret...

www.daytondailynews.com

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