Over at Amazon’s Omnivoracious blog, Brad Thomas Parsons has not only managed to snag a post-Pulitzer interview with Junot Diaz–he actually has the opening passage of Diaz’s current work-in-progress, “Dark America”, which starts: I’m somewhere in the Zone, traveling on top of an transport. Bound for City. The only City there is…. “Who knows when [...]

I am shocked and saddened this morning to hear of the death of the Montserrat-born writer E.A. “Archie” Markham, via an email circulated by his publishers, Peepal Tree Press. Here is the text of that announcement: “We have just received the sudden and shocking news of the death of E.A. (Archie) Markham in Paris on [...]

As I mentioned in my last post, V.S. Naipaul is once again starring in the literary pages of newspapers on three continents, thanks to the long-awaited publication of Patrick French’s authorised biography, The World Is What It Is. “It’s hard to open a newspaper without seeing the face of Sir Vidia,” said John Walsh in [...]

The National Gallery of Jamaica has issued an obituary of the Jamaican artist Milton George, who died on Monday 31 March: Milton George (né George Oliver) was born in Asia, Manchester, in 1939 but lived in Kingston and Braeton for most of his life. While he attended part-time classes at what was then the Jamaica [...]

Editor Nicholas Laughlin is on his travels again, but once he gets back I’m sure he will have something to say about two of the National Book Critics’ Circle awards announced last week. Junot Diaz, who was born in the Dominican Republic and moved to New York with his family as a child, won the [...]