John Updike

Between 1920 and 1930, there were three writers with at least five books in the list of 10 best-selling books, according to Publishers Weekly. Two of them are Zane Grey and Sinclair Lewis. The other is Warwick Deeping. Warwick Deeping? --------------...

The intersection of visual art and language in a graphic novel tilts the reading experience. The reader has no choice but to slide into the author's more specifically defined — and designed — world. The hallmarks of great literature are the...

Author George Saunders is having the kind of year that could lead the former roofer and slaughterhouse worker to imagine that someone is spritzing the air around him with a giant bottle of perfume. "The way things have been going recently, it's as if...

For a man who spent many years avoiding interviews as he turned out a body of work that made him one of America's greatest living writers, Philip Roth, who turns 80 on March 19, is talking quite a bit. The writer was interviewed in his 18th century...

The traditionally staid American Academy of Arts and Letters is both charmed and flummoxed by Bob Dylan. The academy announced Wednesday that it voted the musician into its ranks -- its first rock musician ever. But he will be an honorary member: Not...

During the 2012 presidential election, Republican candidate Mitt Romney's openness about his Mormon faith brought to the surface many of the generalizations Americans maintain about what it means to be a Mormon. Ryan McIlvain's debut novel "Elders"...

I've been spending my holiday teaching break trying to finish a manuscript for a young adult coming-of-age novel I'm working on, which has me thinking a lot about coming-of-age novels, which has me wondering if all good novels aren't coming-of-age novels....

In this moving memoir, Katrina Kenison beckons readers into her world and proves to be an insightful guide and companion through the vicissitudes of life. After the death of a friend, and when her youngest son leaves their rural New Hampshire home to...

There are two new displays in the Clark County Public Library foyer this month. Stop by and take a look at them next time you drop by. On the right side of the foyer is a display of comics from days when comics were actually comic, funny, instead of...

Evan S. Connell Jr., a literary iconoclast whose writings as a novelist, poet, essayist and historian won the admiration of critics and a cult-like following of discerning readers with books on subjects as eclectic as Midwestern provincialism, the...

For George Saunders, the lines between utopia and dystopia, between realism and science fiction, between humor and horror, have always been fine. Never is it more true, though, than in his new collection of short stories, “Tenth of December.”...

Every journalist's nightmare is the interview with the subject who responds to questions with one-sentence (or even one-word) answers. Fortunately, the writer Nathan Englander — who was in Chicago recently as the inaugural Crown Speaker Series...