Newest Study Guides

“Some Trees” is a poem that John Ashbery wrote and then published in 1956. The subject seems to be about trees, as the title suggests, but the meanings of those trees go much deeper than the plants alone. The trees can also actually be a metaphor...

Dictee is a 1982 novel by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, a South Korean-American author. It is considered her best, most prominent work, focusing on the experiences of specific iconic, powerful women over the years, as well as a more personal part delving...

Derek Walcott published his collection Midsummer in 1984. The collection is a sequence consisting of 54 poems, one for each year of his life at the time of publication. The title references the narrative conceit of the novel: a poetic examination...

The Arrivants was written by award-winning author Edward Kamau Brathwaite. This creative work explores the implications of black life in the modern world. More specifically, it's a poetic trilogy that highlights the natural beauty and wealth of...

Pushing the boundaries of poetic expression, Zong! transcends the limitations of conventional archives and verses, immersing readers in a profound and captivating exploration of the past. Authored by the accomplished Canadian writer M. NourbeSe...

Flowering Judas, and Other Stories is Katherine Anne Porter’s first collection of published short stories, originally released in 1930 and then revised with the addition of a few new stories five years later. Since that initial publication, one of...

The Difference Engine is a 1990 novel by both William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. It is an "alternative history" book, and is notable for how it pioneered and helped establish the steampunk genre. The novel was nominated for a number of awards,...

Tom Rob Smith is an English novelist born in South London, England in 1979. He graduated from St John’s College in 2001 and subsequently studied creative writing at Parvin University in Italy. Before publishing his debut novel, Child 44, Smith...

One of the most respected American writers of the twentieth century, Elizabeth Bishop (1911 – 1979) is predominantly known as a poet. She won the Pulitzer Prize in 1956 for her poetry collection Cold Springs, and the National Book Award in 1970...

Born in 1952 in Puerto Rico, Judith Ortiz Cofer would go on to become a renowned writer, whose work spanned numerous genres. After her family immigrated to New Jersey when Cofer was 4, they again relocated to Augusta, Georgia in 1967. Cofer would...

Mary Hood was born in Brunswick, Georgia on September 16, 1946. Though a versatile writer of excelling in many forms—including novels, essays and reviews—she is predominantly a master of short fiction. Her preferred literary expression is the...

Ancillary Justice is a science fiction novel by American author Ann Leckie. It is her debut novel, and the first section of her trilogy "Imperial Radch". Ancillary Justice was highly praised, winning the Hugo Award, Nebula Award, BSFA Award,...

Written by Natalie Diaz, a former women's international professional basketball player who returned to Old Dominion University to pursue a writing degree, When My Brother Was An Aztec is a collection of prose and poetry. The book is Diaz's...

Yvain, the Knight of the Lion is romance poem written by the French writer Chretien de Troyes. Though the exact dates of when it was written are unknown, it is written presumably written in the 1170s along with Lancelot because there are a lot of...

Alejandro Morales's 'The Rag Doll Plagues' is an ambitious dystopic novel, set in three different locations across the globe at three different points in time. In each of the three sections of the novel, we encounter three different doctors of...

Written in 1993 by David Malouf, an Australian writer, Remembering Babylon is a novel that centers around an English boy, Gemmy Fairley, who is stranded on an island and raised by the island's natives. It was critically acclaimed, winning the...

Published in 2000, Pastoralia is George Saunders's second short story collection. Like its predecessor, it was highly celebrated, being ranked the fifth-greatest book of all time by literary magazine The Millions.

Pastoralia is comprised of (many...

Although Henry VIII is attributed to the Shakespeare canon and found in nearly every single collection of his plays, the general consensus has long been that the play which brings into the cycle of Shakespeare’s histories the most drama-worthy of...

Margaret Atwood is a Canadian novelist, poet, journalist and activist, considered by some to be amongst the best living writers. She was born in 1939 in Canada's capital, Ottawa, to highly educated parents. Atwood took a keen interest in reading...

Published in 2004, State of Fear is a science fiction novel that was written by Michael Crichton. Though the book incorporates many aspects of global warming and climate change on Earth, State of Fear is actually a fiction work in which terrorists...

John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath remains such an iconic fictional portrait of the effects of the Dust Bowl on victims already suffering as a result of the Great Depression in middle America in the 1930s that it can be difficult to even...

A Princess of Mars was initially published under its original title Under the Moons of Mars in All-Story Magazine in 1912. That appearance in print marked the commencement of the writing career of author Edgar Rice Burroughs (best known as the...

Published in 1945, If He Hollers Let Him Go is the first novel published by Chester Himes and the launch of a career spent examining the corrosive effects of racism. The novel came about as a result heeding advice to head to Hollywood in search of...

Okot p'Bitek (7 June 1931 to 20 July 1982) an Ugandan poet is considered one of the greatest contemporary African poets.His prose poem Song of Lawino brought him international recognition;a poem initially written in Acholi language but translated...