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What's Eating Gilbert Grape focuses on a small town in Iowa called Endora, and tells the tale of a dyfunctional family living in this closed off community where small meaningless parts of everyday life hold literary significance. Published in...

Born in 1895 in Ukraine, Zoshchenko was a Soviet writer. He was a member of the literary group The Serapion Brothers, whose members were highly influenced by the works of science fiction writer and political satirist, Yevgeni Zamyatin. Humor...

Pedro Almodovar's transcendent Talk to Her stars Javier Cámara as Benigno Martín, Darío Grandinetti as Marco Zuluaga, Leonor Watling as Alicia Roncero, and Rosario Flores as Lydia González. It tells the story of male nurse Benigno and...

Set against the dramatic historical backdrop of the Vietnam War, The Wednesday Wars is a young adult novel written by Gary D. Schmidt published in 2007. It won a Newbery Honor medal in 2008 and was also nominated for the 2010 Rebecca Caudill Young...

Jean Blewett was a writer and journalism who advocated for the rights of woman in the 19th and 20th century. She was born to a Scottish family near Lake Erie in Ontario, Canada in 1862 (this is often erroneously suggested to be 1872). Unlike many...

Christopher Soto, also known as Loma, is a contemporary US poet, activist and writer who was born in Los Angeles, California and now resides in Brooklyn, New York. They describe themselves as a 'queer latin@ punk poet', and prefer the pronouns...

In conversations concerning psychoanalysis and psychology, the first name that comes to mind is most likely Sigmund Freud. Freud was an Austrian neurologist as well as the founder of psychoanalysis. He set up his clinical practice in Vienna and...

David Foster Wallace is an American novelist born on February 21, 1962 in Ithaca, New York. He was raised in a family of academics as both his parents were teachers. After graduating high school, he attended Amherst College to study English and...

Published on April 24th, 2012, Farther Away is an eclectic collection of essays by American writer Jonathan Franzen, a winner of the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize among many other prestigious awards.

A New York Times reviewer wrote...

The winner of the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, Empire Falls is a novel written by American author Richard Russo. It was published in 2001, making it one of Russo's earlier works.

Empire Falls is primarily about a man named Miles Roby and his...

Joyce Carol Oates is an American writer born on June 16, 1938 in Lockport, New York. As a child, she was always immersed in the world of books and literature. Her early influences include Lewis Carroll, Ernest Hemingway, Emily Bronte, and Henry...

Through the Glass is a memoir by Shannon Moroney published by Simon and Schuster books in 2014. The non-fiction story is about her emotional recovery after her husband was accused of brutally raping and kidnapping two women. It follows her story...

“An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” stands out as Ambrose Bierce's career defining short story. As a Union veteran of the Civil War, Bierce undertook a writing career that reflected his own life-changing experience in the war. Suffering a sever...

Lucille Clifton’s first collection of poetry was published the year after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. In 1969, Clifton was already over thirty and the mother of six children not even old enough for middle school yet. Once the New...

Published in 2009, White Is for Witching is a novel by British novelist Helen Oyeyemi. A multifaceted novel structured off gothic roots but also venturing into the supernatural genre, it intrigues and captivates with an unforgettably unique...

AM Homes is an American novelist born on December 18, 1961 in Washington, DC. After graduating high school, she attended Sarah Lawrence College and later earned her MFA at the University of Iowa. She started her literary career by writing short...

Over the course of a star-studded career, Terry Eagleton has carved out a role as a pre-eminent literary theorist, critic and academic. His Literary Theory: An Introduction, first published in 1983, has sold over half a million copies, proving it...

Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant is a highly acclaimed novel by Anne Tyler. It is a work of realistic fiction following the lives of three siblings as they grow up with a tragic household. After its publication in 1982, the book was nominated for...

Oscar Wilde’s play A Woman of No Importance opened in London on April 19, 1893, and proceeded to run for 113 performances. Successful revivals were mounted on his home turf in both 1907 and 1915. Broadway was first delighted by Wilde’s adeptly...

The final installment of Canadian writer Margaret Atwood's three book dystopian trilogy, MaddAddam was published in August 2013. It concludes the storyline which started with Oryx and Crake, continuing on to The Year of the Flood.

MaddAddam...

Highly controversial and disputed, Portnoy's Complaint is a 1969 novel by Philip Roth which after its publication, sent waves of shock, outrage, and dissension through both critics and the public. The book is infamous for its extremely candid...

Jemmy is a children's fictional novel by American writer Jon Hassler. It was published in 1980, making it one of Hassler's earliest works. Hassler also wrote the notable works Staggerford and Dear James.

The novel centers around 17 year old...

The first truly great “modern” documentary ever made promises what it delivers: a man in Soviet-era Russian moving about the city and capturing everything. Filmmaker Dziga Vertov essentially creates the grammar of cinema-verite with his Man with a...

In August 1831, Nat Turner led a number of his fellow slaves in a rebellion against the slave-holding population and slave-holding enablers occupying Southampton County, Virginia. Before the insurrection ended as the sun rose over Belmont...