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Ama Ata Aidoo published Our Sister Killjoy in 1979. Though a novel, it reflected her own experiences abroad. She explained in an interview, “I created [Sissie], it’s inevitable that a certain part of me will be reflected in her. But it is not an...

Thomas Hardy was an influential British writer and poet whose work focuses on rural life, class distinctions and conflict, and the shared human experiences of love and disappointment. “Neutral Tones,” written in 1867 and originally published in...

Amber McBride's Me (Moth) (2021) is a young-adult verse novel about Moth, a teenage girl who struggles with the grief of losing her family in a car crash. When Moth meets a boy named Sani, the two instantly connect through their shared pain and...

The novel Moby Dick was the sixth novel published by Herman Melville, a landmark of American literature that mixed a number of literary styles including a fictional adventure story, historical detail and even scientific discussion. The story of...

Richard III generated a great deal of interest both during and after Shakespeare's lifetime. It was published in quarto at least five times after being performed in 1592. Richard Burbage first played Richard the Third and made the "poisonous...

The story of the play originates in the legend of Hamlet (Amleth) as recounted in the twelfth-century Danish History, a Latin text by Saxo the Grammarian. This version was later adapted into French by Francois de Belleforest in 1570. In it, the...

The novel Blackouts explores queer history through the memories of two men in a mentor-mentee relationship. Juan and nene discuss their experiences as gay men and Juan tells nene about Jan Gay and the Sex Variants book that co-opted her research...

Carol Rumens is a British poet and professor whose work is informed by history, language, origins, and the magic in the mundane. Her poem “The Émigrée,” first published in the 1983 collection Star Whisper, expresses the way that nothing—even war,...

Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem is a science fiction novel that follows multiple characters, usually the scientist Wang Miao, as the people of Earth discover and confront an upcoming invasion by aliens from the planet Trisolaris.

The novel...

Out of the Dust is a children's historical novel, written in verse, about a teenage girl and her family struggling to survive on their Oklahoma Panhandle wheat farm during the Depression.

Narrated by Billie Jo Kelby, the book's protagonist, Out of...

Cynthia’s Revels is an allegorical comedy written by Ben Jonson. First performed in 1600, it was published in printed form the next year. The work is an example of plays produced as part of the War of the Theaters. The theaters in question were...

A Game at Chess is a 1624 comedy by English playwright Thomas Middleton. The play takes the form of a chess match, with characters lacking personal names and instead using chess titles, such as the White Knight and the Black King. Despite its...

In 1984, George Orwell presents his vision of dystopia, a world consisting of three massive totalitarian states constantly at war with each other and using technological advancements to keep their respective Party members and masses under careful...

Elizabeth Bishop's "Sestina" was initially published in The New Yorker magazine in 1956. It is, as the title indicates, a sestina—an unrhymed verse form with French origins, in which the concluding words of each line in the poem's opening sestet...

Simon Armitage is a poet, playwright, and translator whose work often centers on relationships and a strong sense of place. His poem "Mother, Any Distance Greater Than a Single Span," originally published in the 1993 collection Book of Matches, ...

Kim by Rudyard Kipling was first published serially in McClure's Magazine and Cassell's Magazine. It was later published as a book by Macmillan and Co. Ltd. in October 1901. The story takes place in the late 19th century, after the Second Afghan...

“An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?” is Immanuel Kant’s famous essay published in 1784. In this essay, he explains what enlightenment is, and ways to achieve it. It is one of the most debated essays on political philosophy. Kant...

"The Mountain" is a 1952 poem by Elizabeth Bishop. First published in Poetry magazine, this work was not included in any volume of poetry during Bishop's lifetime. It is written from the perspective of a speaker trying to make sense of herself and...

“To Althea, from Prison” is a poem by the English poet Richard Lovelace. It is about the poet’s experience in prison for his support of King Charles I. This occurred at a time in England when pro-royalty and pro-parliament factions were in...

Alan Gratz's Ground Zero (2021) is a young-adult historical novel about an American boy who escapes the World Trade Center during the 9/11 terrorist attacks and an Afghan girl who tries to stop her brother from joining the Taliban. The separate...

Flowers for Algernon was originally published as a short story in the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. It won the Hugo Award for Best Short Fiction, the highest prize for a short story in the science fiction field. Keyes says that the...

As a poet, Robert Frost was greatly influenced by the emotions and events of everyday life. Within a seemingly banal event from a normal day—watching the ice weigh down the branches of a birch tree, mending the stones of a wall, mowing a field of...

The Canterbury Tales is at once one of the most famous and most frustrating works of literature ever written. Since its composition in late 1300s, critics have continued to mine new riches from its complex ground, and started new arguments about...

Published in 1850, The Scarlet Letter is considered Nathaniel Hawthorne's most famous novel--and the first quintessentially American novel in style, theme, and language. Set in seventeenth-century Puritan Massachusetts, the novel centers around...