Caldecott-winning children’s book author Maurice Sendak has died from complications of a stroke at age 83. Best known for Where the Wild Things Are (1963), Sendak’s unorthodox tales include Bumble-Ardy, released last fall, about a pig whose parents got eaten.

Step aside, Pantone. These proposed paint chips—based on literary references—offer hues like Gulag (in honor of Solzhenitsyn), Havisham’s Complexion (Great Expectations), Esther’s Sauce (Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar), and Snot (Ian McEwan, The Cement Garden).

For its new Twitter-based gameshow “Questioningly,” the New Yorker asked readers which English word should be eliminated from the language. “Fecund”? “Phlegm”? “Tebowing”? Nope. By an overwhelming vote, the most despised word is … “moist.”

The 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, announced Monday, goes to Brooklyn’s Tracy K. Smith for Life on Mars. Published by Minneapolis’ Graywolf Press, it’s decribed as a “collection of bold, skillful poems” that moves readers “to an authentic mix of joy and pain.”

Musing on Minneapolis’ Minnehaha Falls, Andy Sturdevant notes a 1983 visit by Jorge Luis Borges, who wrote that the “wry mythology” of our state’s lumber camps “includes remarkable creatures—creatures that no one, surely, has ever believed in.”

After hitting an all-time low in 2009, the vitality of the arts industry, as measured by the newest National Arts Index, is rebounding. While funding remains a concern, “half of the 83 indicators used to tabulate the Index score increased” in the latest reporting period.