What is the role of truth and news in poetry? This article from the Poetry Foundation written by Philip Metres, poet, war literature expert, and professor of literature and creative writing at John Carroll University, takes up this question. Tracing the history of documentary poetry back to William Carlos Williams, Metres creates a "roughly chronological" assemblage of documentary poems that...

The Pulitzer Prizes were first awarded in 1917, and they are given for excellence in a variety of categories, including musical composition, fiction, and a wide range of reporting categories. The Pulitzer Prize website contains the complete list of prize winners from 1917 to the present day, along the full text of winning entries in the Journalism categories from 1995 through the present, along...

From his tales of Jim Hawkins and Long John Silver to his verses for children, Robert Louis Stevenson remains a tremendous literary force well over a century after his death in 1894. This fascinating site provides resources for academics, young people, and people with a general interest in Stevenson's life and literary musings. Along the top of the homepage, visitors will find ten sections,...

Written by the Persian mathematician and astronomer Omar Khayyam in the 12th century, the Rubaiyat consists of approximately 1000 quatrains. The Rubaiyat has been translated into over 70 different languages to become the most widely known poem in the world and both the beautiful poetry and the underlying philosophy of the Rubaiyat are responsible for its widespread and enduring popularity. Without...

A group of renowned organizations (including the New York Public Library and The Huntington) have teamed up to create this remarkable archive of manuscripts from Mary Wollstonecraft, William Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, and Percy Bysshe Shelley. What is most remarkable about this collection is that it brings together 90% of all known relevant manuscripts by this amazing family of authors....

Born in Virginia in 1873, Willa Cather's family moved to Nebraska at age 10. She would later attend the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, and would of course share her vision of the Great Plains in novels like "O Pioneers!" and "My Antonia". In 1997, the University of Nebraska at Lincoln began a very ambitious project to digitize hundreds of Cather-authored texts and Cather scholarship for this...

During his productive life, Scotsman William Morris contributed much to the fields of design and art. The William Morris Society helps to preserve his memory, and to afford interested parties the ability to learn more about his legacy and his influential body of writings. The site's main attractions are contained within four sections: "Life", "Art", "Writing", and "Social Thought". Morris...

The Writer's Almanac is a five-minute literary offering that appears on hundreds of radio stations throughout the United States. Narrated by author and man-of-many-hats Garrison Keillor, the show offers up poetry and information about authors from the past and present. Each show usually starts with a short poem and then goes on to feature short profiles of various authors, such as Erich Maria...

Launched in the summer of 2007, the Three Percent website is designed to be a "destination for readers, editors, and translators interested in finding out about modern and contemporary international literature." The "three percent" in question refers to the fact that only 3% of all books published in the United States are works in translation. The site includes translations and reviews by students...

If you're tired of waiting in a long queue for an ebook from your local library, the British Library offers this alternative - ebooks from the 15th century! Select from 253 digitized "Renaissance festival books ... that describe the magnificent festivals and ceremonies that took place in Europe between 1475 and 1700." These festivals were events such as coronations, betrothals, performances,...