MEMETERIA by Thomas May

Arts & Culture Stories from NPR

• 'Coventry' Touches On Gender, Self-Definition In Taking Control Of One's Narrative
  In her first essay collection, Rachel Cusk writes like someone who has been burned and has reacted not with self-censorship but with a doubling-down on clarity.
• In 'Doxology,' The Comedy Is Never Quite In Tune
  Nell Zink is a very funny writer, but the comedy never quite works in her new novel, which follows two aging punks and their daughter, from the Lower East Side of Manhattan in the '80s to D.C. today.
• Frank Lloyd Wright, But DIY: A Rare 'Usonian Automatic' House Is For Sale
  The famed architect conceived a number of dwellings for the mass market to be made from concrete blocks. The idea never took off. But in New Hampshire, one such building is now hitting the market.
• Racial Tensions Complicate The Search For A Missing Child In 'Heaven, My Home'
  Attica Locke's new novel centers on a black Texas ranger's effort to find the vanished son of a white supremacist. Heaven, My Home offers an unsettling American spin on a complicated crime story.
• In 'Savage Gods,' An Author Finds That Pondering Being Leads To An Inability To Write
  Paul Kingsnorth moved to a small farm in Ireland to be closer to the land and to reconnect with the essence of being. Instead of contentment, he found that it was tough to find meaning in writing.
• 'There Isn't Just One Type Of Black,' Says Comedian Nicole Byer
  The rising comedy star and host of the Emmy-nominated baking competition Nailed It! has gone to therapy weekly, escaped grief onstage and taught herself to do her own makeup for television.
• 'Second Founding' Examines How Reconstruction Remade The Constitution
  Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Eric Foner talks how the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments relate to current debates about voting rights, mass incarceration and reparations for slavery.
• 'Red At The Bone' Cuts Close To The Bone
  Jacqueline Woodson's exquisitely wrought new novel follows two black families of different classes whose lives become intertwined when their only children conceive a child together in their teens.
• 'The Undying' Catalogs The Unceasing Losses Of A Breast Cancer Diagnosis
  Arriving the year before an election that could set healthcare and disability policy for decades, Anne Boyer's memoir warns us of the human costs of any system that prioritizes profit over lives.
• Remembering Tony Winner Phyllis Newman
  Tony Award winner Phyllis Newman died Sunday at age 86. She won the award for her role in 1962's Subways Are For Sleeping. She also appeared on TV, as an actress and quiz show panelist.