Emma Alpern

3 weeks ago | vulture.com | Emma Alpern |Jasmine Vojdani

Every month, Emma Alpern and Jasmine Vojdani recommend new fiction and nonfiction books. You should read as many of them as possible. The follow-up to Susan Choi’s 2019 National Book Award winner Trust Exercise, Flashlighttells the epic history of a fractured American family from alternating points of view, starting with the shadowy disappearance of the father, an ethnically Korean immigrant from Japan named Serk.

3 weeks ago | flipboard.com | Emma Alpern

2 days ago"AI and the Death of Literary Criticism"A very interesting piece by Prof. Thomas Balazs in Quillette. An excerpt: When ChatGPT can analyse Hamlet as well as any grad student, we might …2 days agoThe Monument Maker: The World Is Catching Up to Barbara Chase-RiboudAfter decades of working in parallel worlds of sculpture and fiction, the artist is achieving worldwide acclaim. More projects are on the …3 days agoWant to live to a healthy old age?

4 weeks ago | thecut.com | Emma Alpern

Photo: Getty Images This article first appeared in Book Gossip, a newsletter about what we’re reading and what we actually think about it. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every month. When you’re telling a story that doubles as an argument for human rights, it must be tempting to cast the scene with ideal players. The tough but compassionate abortion doctor. The desperate patient who arrives at the clinic with a convincing set of reasons for ending her pregnancy.

1 month ago | grubstreet.com | Emma Alpern

In Adam Roberts’s debut novel, Food Person, a young woman is abruptly fired from her job at a food magazine and ends up ghostwriting a cookbook for a problematic TV actress — “hungover, flaky, shallow, and — worst of all — indifferent to food,” as the book jacket puts it. Roberts, a longtime food-media figure who blogs as the Amateur Gourmet, took the idea straight from his life, though his version was much less dramatic. “My celebrity was really nice and great,” he says.

1 month ago | grubstreet.com | Emma Alpern

Aimee France, maker of artfully bumpy and leaning cakes with ingredients like Earl Grey, calendula, and cognac–tonka bean buttercream, didn’t necessarily expect to become a full-time baker. But when COVID interrupted her college semester, she ended up back at her parents’ house, where she taught herself how to bake. “When I graduated in 2021, my parents were like, ‘All right, Aimee, time to get a job,’” she says.