Latest news with #KateRiley
Washington Post
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
Kate Riley's ‘Ruth' finds wit and wonder in a closed world
It would never work out, but I'm in love with Ruth. She's the impish narrator of Kate Riley's novel about a Hutterite community in Michigan. Chances are you don't know anything about the Hutterites — I didn't until last week — but one of the many delights of this autobiographical story is that Riley feels no rush to lay out their beliefs.
New York Times
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
A Writer With a Divine Touch Captures Life in a Christian Commune
RUTH, by Kate Riley There are inklings of greatness in Kate Riley's first novel, 'Ruth.' It claims a place on that high modern shelf next to the offbeat books of Ottessa Moshfegh, Sheila Heti, Elif Batuman and Nell Zink — those possessors of wrinkled comic sensibilities rooted in pain. It isn't easy of access and won't be to everyone's taste. Riley makes an 'elite product,' as the English writer Angela Carter said of her own fiction. If 'Ruth' fails to find its readership now, I suspect it will become an underground classic of American folk wit, one that happens to be about growing up in a religious cult. 'Ruth' is defiantly strange, and so is Ruth, the protagonist, whom we follow from youth (she is born in 1963) into late middle age. She grows up in a series of linked Christian communes, which resemble Amish settlements. Lives are led mostly off the grid: Property is shared, underwear is homemade and sports and dancing are discouraged for fear of body worship. Distant is the secular world of 'printed T-shirts and cohabitation before marriage.' Romantic love is suspect because it can pry members from strictly communal bonds. There is a loose, ambient sense of near-totalitarian surveillance. Riley herself lived for several years in a similar commune, the book's press materials inform us, but 'Ruth' doesn't read like warmed-over autobiography. It's a delicate aesthetic performance, dexterous in its strangled wordplay. Riley seems to have a few extra wires in her brain. She treats everything in Ruth's life both at face value and as comic grist as we follow it across decades. From the time she's born, Ruth feels like an outsider. Her 'inner imp,' as Riley terms it, is always threatening to pop out. She's restless; she makes inappropriate jokes; she intuits the wrong lessons from her limited reading. (About Tolstoy: 'For a follower of Christ, he seemed to care awfully about the downy lips of Russian princesses.') She is a green-headed fly among moths. What gives this novel its soul is that she longs for religious feeling; she is broken by what fails to open between herself and God. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Otago Daily Times
10-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Otago Daily Times
Bold choice wins speech competition
Cust School pupil Kate Riley, 12, with her mum Anna. PHOTO: SHELLEY TOPP A young contestant in the Rotary Club of Rangiora's annual Primary School Speech competition has won the judges over with a bold choice during finals night. In a group of seven talented young orators, Cust School pupil Kate Riley, 12, gained the winning edge by writing and reading her thought-provoking speech called ''I Know Of A Girl'' as a poem. The event was held at the Rangiora Town Hall Theatre where contestants were thrown an unexpected curve ball on the night with no microphone available. However, they all coped well with that added level of difficulty. The competition was judged by Waimakariri Mayor Dan Gordon and Hurunui Mayor Marie Black, with former Waimakariri Mayor David Ayers hosting the event for the club. Black said the young speakers had all delivered exceptional speeches. ''It hasn't been an easy job to get the first, second and third placings.'' Gordon congratulated the contestants on taking part in the competition. ''Your speeches were all very topical and well-researched,'' he said. ''It is not easy speaking in front of a public audience.'' He also passed on advice he had been given when he began public speaking. ''I was always told to speak to the end of the room which helps project the voice better.'' Second placing went to last year's winner, Edie Barber, 12, from Leithfield School, who was again in fine form with an impressive delivery of her well-written speech titled: ''The truth about teenagers (from the perspective of someone who isn't quite a teenager, but who has thought a lot about becoming one)''. Third placing went to Milan Hart, 12, of Ashley-Rakahuri School who spoke about the ''Four important reasons why you shouldn't get a dog''. The competition is held annually for cash prizes and the winner is also presented with the Des Moore Memorial Cup to hold for a year. The prizes were presented by Gordon and Black, with Rita Moore, whose late husband, Des, was a prominent Rotarian, also on hand to present the cup to Kate for her win. By Shelley Topp
Yahoo
02-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump Attacks NPR and PBS as Dangerous War on 'Woke' Escalates
President Trump on Thursday signed an executive order that ends public government funding of NPR and PBS in yet another culturally polarized attack on anything deemed 'woke.' 'Unlike in 1967, when the CPB was established, today the media landscape is filled with abundant, diverse, and innovative news options,' the executive order reads. 'Government funding of news media in this environment is not only outdated and unnecessary but corrosive to the appearance of journalistic independence.' This order is more symbolic than anything, as both NPR and PBS receive most of their funding from independent sponsors. And yet the order would limit funding to rural areas in particular, as those stations receive the most of the sliver of government funding that NPR and PBS receive. 'This order defies the will of the American people and would devastate the public safety, educational and local service missions of public media—services that the American public values, trusts and relies on every day,' said America's Public Television Stations CEO Kate Riley. She went on to note that those rural stations provide a 'lifeline in hundreds of communities where there is no other source of local media.'
