The Thread® - Books and Literary News

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Big Books and Bold Ideas is a weekly series hosted by Kerri Miller and produced by Kelly Gordon every Friday at 11 a.m., featuring conversations about books and other literary ideas. Listen to Big Books and Bold Ideas here.

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Talking Volumes is an annual event series featuring notable authors in conversation about their new books. Presented by MPR News and The Minnesota Star Tribune.

March 3, 2017 4:28 PM

Paula Fox, prize winning author, dead at 93

She created high art out of imagined chaos in such novels as "Poor George" and "Desperate Characters" and out of the real-life upheavals in her memoir "Borrowed Finery."

by Associated Press

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March 3, 2017 12:00 AM

Sanity is slowly lost in 'Spaceman of Bohemia'

It's 2018 and a mysterious cloud has appeared between Earth and Venus. A Czech astrophysicist is sent to investigate. The only problem? Hanging on to his sense of reality while alone in space.

by Jason Heller

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March 3, 2017 12:00 AM

A Purple Heart warrior takes aim at military inequality in 'Shoot Like a Girl'

Maj. Mary Jennings Hegar is part of a lawsuit that argues excluding women from combat is unconstitutional. She says the lawsuit isn't about women's rights -- it's about military effectiveness.

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March 3, 2017 12:00 AM

How do you raise a feminist daughter? Chimamanda Adichie has 15 suggestions

Chimamanda Adichie's new book began as a letter to a childhood friend (and new mother) who had asked for some advice. It's called "Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions."

by Audie Cornish

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March 2, 2017 11:07 AM

Unemployed, living in a caravan - and now, winner of a $165,000 literary prize

Ali Cobby Eckermann, an Australian indigenous poet forcibly taken from her family as a child, discovered without warning last week she had just won one of the richest literary prizes in the world.

by Colin Dwyer

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March 2, 2017 6:06 AM

America's 'complacent class': How self-segregation is leading to stagnation

Economist and author Tyler Cowen worries that Americans' desire to keep changing has gone away. "The forward march of progress," he says, "is not the main story today."

by Heidi Glenn

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March 1, 2017 11:07 AM

So presidential: Alec Baldwin working on Trump satire

Actor Alec Baldwin is teaming with author Kurt Andersen on the satirical book "You Can't Spell America Without Me: The Really Tremendous Inside Story of My Fantastic First Year as President Donald J. Trump."

by Associated Press

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February 28, 2017 7:22 PM

Penguin Random House announces book deal with the Obamas

In a statement Tuesday the publisher said it was "very much looking forward" to working with the former president and former first lady, who will each be writing a book.

by Maggie Penman