“Turning the Pages is a software program developed by Armadillo Studios that enables libraries and museums to digitize books, manuscripts, and other documents in an engaging 3D format. Here, readers will find the British Library’s spectacular collection of items digitized with this software.”
Chances are that you have because you live in the Bay Area, where books continue to beckon readers, despite the insistent siren calls of digital media. Independent bookstores have found new life, even in the growing shadow of Amazon; festivals, readings and book clubs continue to proliferate; and authors are still managing to make the Bay Area a literary haven even as soaring costs of living force a creative exodus. […] City Lights — the North Beach bookstore and publisher founded by poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti — is also enjoying a string of record sales years, according to head book buyer Paul Yamazaki. “Book publishing in the Bay Area is alive and thriving,” said Steve Wasserman, a native son who recently returned to run Berkeley’s Heyday Books, after stints in the East Coast publishing world and as editor of the Los Angeles Times Book Review. There’s something in the barometric pressure of the Bay Area that attracts writers and artists seeking transcendence and ecstasy, and it makes the Bay Area the envy of the world. The tsunami of the digital revolution is battering much of our cultural heritage into what might be called oblivion. A major theme of this year’s festival is resistance, and among some 200 featured authors will be Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza, Bernie Sanders presidential campaign strategist Becky Bond, Occupy Wall Street co-creator Micah White, and feminist Roxane Gay. […] she has proved to be a tireless fundraiser and networker as the festival’s only full-time, year-round employee, bringing in sponsors like The Chronicle, the Economist and the city of Berkeley and philanthropists like Will Hearst, chairman of the board of Hearst Corp., which owns The Chronicle. The tech industry — the holy grail of fundraising for countless Bay Area arts projects and community groups — has proved to be a disappointment, Parsons said. Friends offered him box seats, but he preferred the rowdy, windswept bleachers. Since he lost sight in one eye, it’s been harder for Ferlinghetti, a longtime visual artist, to continue painting.
Source: The Bay Area is still a literary haven from the mad digital world – San Francisco Chronicle
New letters shed light on Hemingway’s unrequited love and early life, showing a seldom-seen side of the budding author in high school.
Source: Discovered: Hemingway’s 99-Year-Old Letters to His High School Crush
“Bob Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature on Thursday for work that the Swedish Academy described as “having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.”He is the first American to win the prize since Toni Morrison in 1993, and a groundbreaking choice by the Nobel committee to select the first literature laureate whose career has primarily been as a musician.”
Source: ‘Poetry for the ear’: Bob Dylan wins Nobel Prize in literature – The Washington Post
Little more than a century and a half later, San Francisco is one of the most vibrant literary cities in the world. Like Jonathan Still, countless outsiders, from Mark Twain to Allen Ginsberg to Isabel Allende to Dave Eggers, have come to the Bay Area — drawn by its spirit of innovation, its inclusiveness, its Mediterranean climate (and London fog) — and have contributed immeasurably to its cultural life. Those who grew up in the area, Jack London, Rebecca Solnit and Daniel Handler, to name a few, chose to stay.
via SF Bay Area locations of literary importance – San Francisco Chronicle.
http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/470894603
As part of National Poetry Month the Poetry and Literature Center has launched the Archive of Recorded Poetry and Literature, a series of audio-recorded readings of renowned poets and prose writers reading from their work at the Library of Congress. Recordings include readings by former consultants in Poetry Elizabeth Bishop, Gwendolyn Brooks and Robert Frost; Nobel Laureates Mario Vargas Llosa and Czeslaw Milosz; and celebrated writers such as Ray Bradbury, Margaret Atwood, and Kurt Vonnegut.
The Archive of Recorded Poetry and Literature at the Library of Congress dates back to 1943, when Allen Tate was Consultant in Poetry. It contains nearly two thousand recordings—of poets and prose writers participating in literary events at the Library’s Capitol Hill campus as well as sessions at the Library’s Recording Laboratory.
Most of these recordings were captured on magnetic tape reels, and are only accessible at the Library itself. In digitizing the archive and presenting it online, the Library hopes to greatly broaden its use and value. The material featured on this online presentation represents a sample of this collection. The site will continue to provide additional items from this archive on a monthly basis over the next several years.
via Archive of Recorded Poetry and Literature Center at the Library of Congress.
Originally posted by Gary Price at Infodocket.. http://www.infodocket.com/2015/04/15/an-archive-of-recorded-poetry-and-literature-debuts-on-library-of-congress-web-site/
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