The Big Read is an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts, designed to restore reading to the center of American culture. Our featured book is Great Tales & Poems of Edgar Allan Poe.

Few writers have pioneered so many forms of escapism as Edgar Allan Poe, and fewer still have sought escape so desperately themselves. Poe's claustrophobic life consisted of one escape attempt after another, most of them unsuccessful. Again and again he dodged poverty through overwork, but never for long. He fled loneliness into an ill-fated, loving but likely chaste marriage to a frail cousin. And drink promised an oblivion that kept luring him back, with increasingly destructive consequences.

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Adults are invited to submit artwork using the themes of Poe's writing! Details here.