In our morning reading: fiction by Juan Martinez, the endangered languages of New York City, and more.
Sunday Stories: “The Traveling Mink Coat”
The Traveling Mink Coat
by CAT Wyatt
My father, a military pilot during WWII, was on a training mission a month before Valentine’s Day, 1945. Urgently needing to find a present for my mother, he went into the town close to his training facility. He noticed a beautiful mink coat in a shop window, a luxurious full-length, mahogany-colored, sheared mink coat with a caramel-colored silk lining. The lining reminded him of my mother’s silky, taffy-blonde hair. After purchasing the coat, he waited while a seamstress embroidered my mother’s and his initials deep inside the left slit pocket. My father wrote a card and tucked it in the same pocket, knowing she was left-handed and always kept a handkerchief in her left coat pocket, knowing she would find the card and their initials.
The Challenges of Art and Life: An Interview With Nicole Haroutunian
Nicole Haroutunian’s new novel, Choose This Now, wrestles with a lot of big themes in the subtlest of ways. This is a book about creative struggles, intimacy, and families both found and biological. Over the course of this book’s timeframe, its characters make decisions that are rewarding and emiently frustrating; they go to bizarre parties and embark on ill-concieved relationships. It’s an immersive work with the ebb and flow of life, and I chatted with its author about the project’s origins and her own experiences while writing it.
Morning Bites: Revisiting “The Sparrow,” Poetry Recommendations, Leanne Shapton on Tulips, and More
In our morning reading: revisiting the novel “The Sparrow,” an interview with Maris Kreizman, and more.
Afternoon Bites: Michel Butor on Reading, Zachary C. Solomon’s Recommendations, John Yau’s Collaborations, and More
In our afternoon reading: nonfiction by Michel Butor and Erik Davis, John Yau on collaboration, and more.
VCO: Chapter 16
Chapter 16
Everhet employed his swooping charisma to charm the director of the contemporary art museum downtown to let him use the main exhibit room for his newest installation.
Immediate upon getting our passes it began to feel like I was leading one of those required timeshare sales meetings during your vacation that you earned by sitting through the same meeting on your last vacation. It’s infinite loop logic.
Luke Arnold and Doc Wyatt on Writing Their New Comic “Essentials”
Crowdfunding is currently underway for The Essentials, a new graphic novel from writers Luke Arnold and Doc Wyatt and a staggeringly good selection of artists. Arnold is best-known for his work as an actor — notably on Black Sails and Glitch — but he’s expanded his purview into writing in recent years, and Wyatt has an extensive list of credits in both comics and television.
As for the art? Well, there’s a preview below featuring some of Jason Howard’s work on the book; you might know him from Big Girls, The Vallars, or Trees. Also contributing to Essentials are DaNi, Glenn Fabry, Vince Locke, Brendan McCarthy, Andrea Mutti, M.K. Perker, and Bill Sienkiewicz.
Morning Bites: Christina Cooke on Writing, Danielle Dutton’s Playlist, Suzanne Scanlon on Memoir, and More
In our morning reading: an interview with Christina Cooke, Dan Kois on Scrabble, and more.