Do You Teach Chemistry?

Written by By M. Leona Godin, author of There Plant Eyes: A Personal and Cultural History of Blindness In William Melvin Kelley’s A Drop of Patience, we follow the life of a young Black musician named Ludlow Washington, who is placed in a school for the blind when he is five and remains there until

Because what you read matters.   Subscribe to the Penguin Classics Newsletter here.   Summer is officially fading like a sunset, and whether you’re back to school or back to your usual fall routine, we can guarantee there will be plenty of classics to keep you company. From our first Puerto Rican classic to a revelatory

By: Jess McHugh   Who gets to tell the American story?   That was the question that preoccupied me in the years of researching and writing Americanon. I was fascinated by the ways in which commonplace books, owned by millions of Americans—from almanacs to primers to cookbooks—shaped and reshaped American identity over generations of reading.

Thirty years ago, Carter addressed racism, colorism, classism, and sexism head on. Her books feel just as relevant today.   This essay by Caitlin Landuyt, editor, Vintage Books, was previously published on Crime Reads   Nanette Hayes, the Black jazz saxophonist/Francophile/reluctant crime solver of Charlotte Carter’s Rhode Island Red, Coq au Vin, and Drumsticks, blew into my life

Ben Ehrenreich is being awarded the American Book Award for Desert Notebooks, which examines how the unprecedented pace of destruction to our environment and an increasingly unstable geopolitical landscape have led us to the brink of a calamity greater than any humankind has confronted before. Ehrenreich draws on the stark grandeur of the desert to ask

William Melvin Kelley and illustrator Aiki Kelley are being awarded the American Book Award for Dunfords Travels Everywheres, a Joycean, Rabelaisian romp in which he brings back some of his most memorable characters in a novel of three intertwining stories.   “Among the most innovative and exciting novelists in the history of international literature, the

Carolyn Forché is being awarded the American Book Award for In the Lateness of the World, a tenebrous book of crossings, of migrations across oceans and borders but also between the present and the past, life and death. The world here seems to be steadily vanishing, but in the moments before the uncertain end, an illumination

Because what you read matters.   Subscribe to the Penguin Classics Newsletter here.   With May flowers in bloom, we’re looking forward to bringing some to safely reunite with loved ones (Hi, Mom!) and getting some much-needed R&R, even if it’s just on the couch with a book that’s been on our TBR since the before

In The Penguin Book of the Modern American Short Story, celebrated editor and anthologist, John Freeman showcases a curated selection of the best and most representative contemporary American short fiction from 1970 to 2020, including works by such authors as Ursula K. LeGuin, Toni Cade Bambara, Jhumpa Lahiri, Sandra Cisneros, and Ted Chiang.   The

Editor John Freeman reflects on his journey with the world of short stories in light of the upcoming release of The Penguin Book of the Modern American Short Story.  Click here  to see the full Table of Contents for The Penguin Book of the Modern American Short Story.   The Penguin Book of the Modern

April is National Poetry Month, reminding us of poetry’s important role in our culture and in our classrooms. We are celebrating by appreciating a few titles that highlight the lives and work of inspiring poets.   Red Comet  Red Comet is a biography of Sylvia Plath that focuses on her remarkable literary and intellectual achievements,

Richard Wright (1908–1960) is one of the most influential African American writers of the last century. But in the 1940s, at the height of his creative powers, he was unable to secure publication of perhaps his most important novel. Now, for the first time, by special arrangement with the author’s estate, Library of America is publishing