Laila Lalami

On WMDs, porn stars, Ernesto Zedillo, and other things graduates should know: Ferrell’s commencement speech at Harvard.
Link via Killing Goliath.

Find out what people like Zadie Smith, Rabih Alameddine, and Ann Packer are working on at the moment.
Link via Maud.

and the hordes will follow. Just kidding. Sort of. The book that brought back the book club is Steinbeck’s East of Eden.

Just because you’re on Granta’s list of best young novelists doesn’t mean you can get a visa to Bangladesh. Ask Monica Ali.

Three weeks ago, when Ali Lemrabet was sentenced to a four-year prison term for articles that appeared in satirical papers he owns, many people thought the case would not stand on appeal due to widespread criticism of the sentence in Morocco. But today, Lemrabet’s case failed on appeal. He has been on a hunger strike since the original sentence. It isn’t clear what happens next. A Supreme Court appeal or a pardon would be the only two ways to save him from a stay in jail. Here is Human Rights Watch’s report on the case.

Chick lit has gotten quite a rap in recent years. Now it’s dick lit’s turn. Read Steve Almond’s letter to Moby: How I became a dick lit author without even trying (no permalink, see left hand side column). And just as the chick lit women resent the label, so does Almond with dick lit.

“Marjane Satrapi does not like being told what to do.
“Here, in New York, I smoke twice as much as I do in Paris. Because it is forbidden, it tastes so much better,” she says, referring to New York’s new anti-smoking laws, her large, dark eyes shining with amusement.
The 33-year-old Iranian author is here to promote her graphic novel, “Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood,” which details her life in Tehran as the willful daughter of intellectual Marxists. Her father is an engineer, her mother is descended from the Qajar dynasty, which ruled Iran from 1779 until 1925, when Reza Shah Pahlavi took control through a coup. ”

The AP has a profile on the author of Persepolis.

The Summer 2003 issue of Small Spiral Notebook, edited by the lovely and amazing Felicia Sullivan, is now up. Lots of goodies: fiction by Eileen Cruz and Danielle Lavaque among others and interviews with Steve Almond (My Life in Heavy Metal) and Jen Weiner (Good in Bed, In her Shoes).

“It’s difficult to exaggerate the importance of this book. Whether “The Language Police” will turn out to be one of those rare books that actually influence the way we live — Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle,” John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath,” Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring,” Ralph Nader’s “Unsafe at Any Speed” — remains to be seen, but surely one must pray that it does. Meticulously researched and forcefully argued, it makes appallingly plain that the textbooks American schoolchildren read and the tests that measure their academic progress have been corrupted by a bizarre de facto alliance of the far left and the far right.”
Read the rest of Jonathan Yardley’s review of The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn.

Edward Said comments on the Middle East road map in this month’s London Review of Books . And no, he’s not a fan.