BEST AUTHOR BEST : STEPHANIE BURT

The poet and critic, whose book '' Taylor's Version '' is based on her Harvard Class about Taylor Swift's music and lyrics, sees similarities between the pop star and Alexander Pope.

.-  What do you and Taylor Swift have in common?

Ambition. The wish to be loved. The perilous, and occasionally ridiculous, desire to please everyone.

A preference for incremental, build-on-what came before art over art that purports to burn everything down and start again. A willingness - and, I hope, an ability - to work with other people.

Also a deep attachment to the verse-chorus-verse-chorus bridge conventions of modern  songwriting, though of course she can write songs. I just write about them.

.-  Tell me about a writer in the literary canon, who, like Swift, '' depicts her need to be loved, alongside her ambitions ''? 

Alexander Pope [ despite his sometime protestations otherwise ]! Like Swift, he turned his dismay and his astonishment at the fickleness of public opinion - and his devotion to his real friends and real fans - into some of his greatest art [ start with '' Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot ''].

I talk about him in the book!

.-  What's the best book you've ever received as a gift?

'' Being Emily '' [ 2012 ] by Rachel Gold. Consider giving it to a trans girl near you! I ended up writing the introduction to the revised second edition [2018]. Now we write fiction together.

.-  Do you have a favorite memoir by a musician?

If it counts as a memoir : '' Music : What Happened?, '' by Scott Miller. If not then '' Bedsit Disco Queen '' by Tracey Thorn.

.-  What books are on your night stand ?

If you mean books I've read lately, before bedtime, and finished, and loved  : 

'' The Incandescent '' by Emily Tesh; '' Among Ghosts,'' by Rachel Hartman; the expanded reissue of Juan Felipe Herrera's '' Akrilica": and '' Beyond Personhood : An Essay in Trans Philosophy,'' by Talia Mae Bettcher.

If you mean books I keep near my bed, in my bedroom, where I write some of my own work, that's a big stack and it rotates, but near the top you'll often find a travel-sized :

'' Complete Poems of W.B. Yeats,'' something by my teacher Helen Vendler, and something by the English poet-scholar-critic William Empson.

The Publishing continues to Part [2]. The World Students Society thanks The New York Times.