Author Sherri Browning Erwin ‘90, has recently released her latest novel, Jane Slayre. The book follows in the footsteps of the insanely popular Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, taking a classic tale and giving it a modern makeover with more than a hint of fantasy. The title character of Browning Erwin’s novel is a young girl who, after being orphaned, is raised by vampires. The book has been well received by readers, and Erwin, busy promoting her newest work, recently took some time to answer our questions.

It is true that the follow-up to Yann Martel’s Booker Prize-winning Life of Pi features animals. We may acknowledge that the titles characters of Beatrice and Virgil are a donkey and a howler monkey, respectively, and let us move on. This is a book that deserves to be taken on its own merit, without being tied to a work of the past.

Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times recently explored the question of artistic ownership in this article, discussing the most recent work of sometime-novelist, David Shields. With Reality Hunger, Shields takes quotes from well-known writers such as Philip Roth and Joan Didion and repurposes them.

When Dave Eggers was writing his memoir, he worked mostly at night. Now that he is a father, he said while talking to Rachel Cooke of The Observer, he now keeps “bankers hours.”

The Catcher in the Rye. How many high school students complained about it, and how many swore they wouldn’t read it? SparkNotes, PinkMonkey, I’ll ask a friend what it’s about. How many students over the half-century since its publication resisted, and tried their damnedest to hold out and not read it? Come to think of [...]

Personally, I don’t think that I could ever ’fess up to eating cottage cheese mixed with sardine juice. To me, that sounds just wretched. Add to it that the architect of this dish eats it while standing over the sink (on one leg, no less), and it sounds absolutely criminal.

I would have loved to be in the room when Kevin Roose pitched the idea to his mother. “That’s right, Mom. I want to leave Brown for a semester to study at Liberty University! Yeah, the Jerry Falwell school!” What? What? She must have been ripping out her hair.

What is perhaps one of the most common themes in all of literature has been remade once more by the pen of debut novelist, Tania James, in her stunning work, Atlas of Unknowns. The concept of an ideal family, whether its presence or its absence, and the extent to which it influences the self, has come to be perhaps the most recognizable subject of the novel.

She walked into the Cassani Lounge, set down her thermos and said, “Hello, I’m Jane. You know, the one who’s dressed up.” That was the simple introduction that the author of almost 300 children’s books and winner of the Nebula Award and Caldecott Medal chose for herself.

“Go to where the silence is,” wrote Amy Goodman, signing my notebook after her lecture last Friday.