Arts and Culture

MPR News with Kerri Miller continues its look at what to read in this tumultuous and transformational year, with a focus on fiction, memoirs and poetry.

Coming soon to prisons across the country: a curated collection of literature. Here’s why that matters.

Whatever you expected from Tamsyn Muir's followup to her lesbian-necromancers-in-space epic “Gideon the Ninth,” this is not that book — it's something wilder, darker and much, much weirder.

The paintings of Adam Swanson, on view at the Great Lakes Aquarium, features a federally listed threatened and endangered animal of Minnesota. The Art Hounds also recommend an “angsty and hilarious” improv and teen diary reading at the Minnesota Fringe Virtual Festival, as well as an actor-aided exploration of your habitat, also known as your home.

Toobin's new book, “True Crimes and Misdemeanors,” examines how Trump and his team outmaneuvered special counsel Robert Mueller. Mueller, he says, gave Trump "a free pass" on obstruction of justice.

Love is central to the work of Toni Morrison — she brought love to her examinations of Black life, and love itself was her enduring subject. But love isn't always a good or joyous thing in her work.

Akwaeke Emezi's new novel begins with a death; it adopts the form — but not the spirit — of traditional crime fiction, glorying in some of the genre's conventions while slyly subverting them.

Madelyn Dietz and the other winners will each receive a $5,000 cash award. The student poet program was launched in 2011, with winners contributing to community programs and poetry events and performing their work everywhere from Lincoln Center to the White House.

In “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist examines the laws and practices that created a bipolar caste system in the U.S. — and how the Nazis borrowed from it.

Ashley Blooms' novel follows ten-year-old Misty, who can speak to everything around her — even the mice in the walls answer back. But she doesn't have words for what her friend has done to her.