45. Illuminating Poetry with Technology

Casey Faist, Heroku's Python Buildpack Maintainer, sits down with Justin Kestler, the co-founder of LitCharts, and Devyn Gasperini, one of its full stack web developers. They discuss the genesis of the project, and how it's really an evolution of Web 2.0 sites such as SparkNotes. LitCharts differentiates itself by providing modern English translations of well-known literary works, as well as color highlighting and annotating content word by word. Through a clever use of hyperlinks, they can also cite intrareferential and interreferential materials. This has the end result of producing thorough analyses between 8,000 and 10,000 words.

Much of the work developing LitCharts has centered around user experience and user feedback. The LitCharts team strives to not only provide a pleasing experience for the end user, but also a feature-rich interface for the writers providing annotations. Their end goal is to represent works of literature in unique ways, as well as literature that nobody else has covered.

Links from this episode

• LitCharts takes a completely new approach to analyzing and explaining literature.
• LitChart Poetry Guides help you analyze and learn more about poetry.