Here’s a playlist I put together for Largehearted Boy of songs related in various ways to the new novel.

Not sure if Vivian Darkbloom would approve of the anagrams I cooked up for this month’s puzzle.

Here’s a piece I wrote for Critics at Large about R&B singer Anthony Hamilton and his excellent new album, What I’m Feelin.

A Minneapolis-focused piece I wrote about Prince for Slate. It recasts some material from an article I wrote for Mpls.-St. Paul a few years ago, but adds some new stuff.

Here’s a longish but casual thing I wrote for the Los Angeles Review of Books about Matthew Kirschenbaum’s Track Changes: A Literary History of Word Processing.

Good to read this passage from Thomas Love Peacock’s 1818 novel, Nightmare Abbey, on the even of book publication (though really I’ve been surprisingly relaxed). The character is patterned after Shelley: To get a clear view of his own ideas, and to feel the pulse of the wisdom and genus […]

My latest Paris Review puzzle is a cut-and-paste story in which the game is to match the story’s appropriated sentences with their original sources. Answers TK. And here’s the previous puzzle and its answers.

Really happy to get this enthusiastic review from Kirkus. “Smart, witty, and endearing … Austen-esque comedy of manners.” (So, recommended if you like Jane Austen!) “Felicitous characters and a scrumptious plot make Hicks’ second novel refreshing and fun.”

The contest is over, so this is a belated post of a group of silly, difficult, often shameless rhyming puzzles I wrote for the Paris Review Daily. And the answers. Look for more puzzles and parlor games in the nearish future.

I posted a long, somewhat shambolic essay in this space a month or so ago. It was mostly the leavings of a longer, abandoned project, and I thought it would helpful in various ways to post it. It was! I got some kind responses to it, which was especially nice […]