Finally, after months of waiting, we have footage Blonde—the hotly-anticipated Netflix movie adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates’ mammoth work of historical bio-fiction. Helmed by darkly-cerebral Australian director Andrew Dominik (The Assassination of Jesse James, Mindhunter), the buzz around Blonde has been Read more >
Vladimir Nabokov is a well-documented complainer. He’s one of the few writers I think would have been good at Twitter (sorry to almost everyone else, living or dead). Actually, he would have delegated it to Véra, who would have gotten Read more >
Forefront Books and the Frederick Douglass Family Initiatives are teaming up to form Frederick Douglass Books, a publishing imprint meant to “establish a pathway for Black and Brown authors” into the publishing industry, the two organizations announced in a press Read more >
Ruth Ozeki has a number of accolades under her belt: novelist, filmmaker, Zen Buddhist priest, and now Women’s Prize winner. Her fourth novel, The Book of Form and Emptiness, was declared the victor at a ceremony in London earlier today. Read more >
Publishing can feel like an impossible industry to break into. Actually, even the fact that we’re phrasing it like that is indicative of the problem. The gates are closed to a lot of people—notably, people of color. On Saturday, the Read more >
So we beat on, writers against our deadlines, born back ceaselessly into the pages of extremely well-known novels. Yes, I will take any excuse to mangle the closing line of The Great Gatsby, but at least I credit my source Read more >
Emotionally naked that is. Get your minds out of the gutter. Earlier this morning Amazon dropped the first teaser trailer for My Policeman, the hotly-anticipated new Harry Styles drama based on the 2012 romance novel by Bethan Roberts. Described as Read more >
A young mother’s mysterious death and her son’s subsequent kidnapping blow open a decades-long mystery about the woman’s true identity, and the murderous federal fugitive at the center of it all. Lit Hub and CrimeReads have an exclusive first look Read more >
What not to get your dad (or me, who is a dad) for Father’s Day: a $30 lifetime subscription to the 12min Micro Book Library. I can think of (almost) nothing more tortuous than confronting an infinite amount of “books” Read more >
On Tuesday, James Patterson apologized for claiming in an interview that older white men face “racism” in the writing field. “I apologize for saying white male writers having trouble finding work is a form of racism. I absolutely do not Read more >
There’s a brand new Jane Austen trailer in town (must be Tuesday). This time, it’s an adaptation of Persuasion, Austen’s final novel, starring Dakota Johnson and slated to appear on Netflix on July 15. Vogue calls it a “stylish, subversive Read more >
Virginia Woolf wrote about material culture in the shadows of conflict, destruction and colonialism, presenting high-society in a London struggling to put itself back together again, but is Mrs Dalloway really just a novel about parties and pretty things? And what Read more >
The Southern Poverty Law Center is reporting that Hatewatch has identified the principals behind Antelope Hill, a far right publisher founded in 2020 that specializes in white nationalist, fascist, Nazi publications. With a catalog ranging from newly translated Nazi-era texts Read more >
Los Angeles’ Eso Won Books has announced that they will be shutting their doors at the end of the year. Since the 1980s, this independent bookstore has dedicated itself to celebrating the voices of Black writers. They are known for Read more >
About four months ago, I had a baby. Certainly this will not be the first time you hear that the experience of becoming a parent can come with a profound erosion of self, particularly if you’re the mother. But the Read more >
It was, I suppose, inevitable. Nancy Crampton Brophy, a self-published romance novelist and the author of an essay entitled “How to Murder Your Husband,” who has lately been on trial for . . . murdering her husband, has been convicted Read more >
Honestly, even if the rest of your week is terrible, at least today brings us new books from Lisa Taddeo, Ibram X. Kendi, Ada Calhoun, and more. What else could you want? * Lisa Taddeo, Ghost Lover (Avid Reader Press) Read more >
Today, Penguin Press released a book trailer (yes, they still exist!) for Ottessa Moshfegh’s much anticipated upcoming novel, Lapvona, which follows a deformed boy living in a depraved and corrupt medieval village. On the other hand, the trailer, directed by Read more >
That would be the advice of acclaimed American poet Mary Reufle, who—as tweeted by poet and director of Bennington College’s MFA program Mark Wunderlich yesterday—keeps this creepy decaying book in her yard to remind herself that all literature is vanity, and Read more >
America’s sad little homegrown fascist brigade, the Proud Boys (like the Brownshirts, but with less no sex!), have taken their victimhood/insecurity-driven agenda to new depths of idiocy (Proud? See image above.) This past Saturday a group of around ten men Read more >
