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News, Notes, Talk

Here are the finalists for the 2022 PEN America Literary Awards.

This morning, PEN America announced the finalists for their 2022 Literary Awards. The list includes 54 authors and 11 translators who published works in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, biography, essay, science writing, translation, and more in 2021. Through the books on Read more >

By Snigdha Koirala

“Holy shit, did you just say that out loud?” Maggie Gyllenhaal on Ferrante’s novels.

A month into its release, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s atmospheric adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s The Lost Daughter has received praise for “consider[ing] women’s lives in intimate detail and in the light of wide-ranging, deep-rooted experience” (The New Yorker) and empathizing with “a Read more >

By Walker Caplan

"The flap of a wave; the kiss of a wave." 8 of the best uses of water in Virginia Woolf's novels.

My fellow and favorite Aquarian, Virginia Woolf, would have turned 140 today. And given Aquarius’ water-bearing status, is it any surprise that we find water—in metaphors, in imagery, in rhythm, in flux, in just about everything—throughout Woolf’s novels? Not at Read more >

By Snigdha Koirala

Edith Wharton’s groundbreaking Pulitzer was originally meant for Sinclair Lewis.

This week we’re celebrating the 160th birthday of Edith Wharton—novelist, short story writer, and the first woman to win a Pulitzer prize. But as it turns out, the 1921 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction wasn’t initially meant to go to Wharton—the Read more >

By Walker Caplan

The Barnes & Noble Virginia Woolf bag remains the gold standard for literary totes.

Today, on the 140th anniversary of Virginia Woolf’s birth, I have a moral obligation to speak my truth: with all due respect to my employer—whose own Joan Didion tote has been called iconic (by us)—the Virginia Woolf Barnes & Noble Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

20 new titles coming to bookstores near you!

No better way to break up the day than to trek over to your local bookstore! If you’re looking for a sign to get up  and go for a jaunt, this is it! This week, we’ve got a treasure trove Read more >

By Katie Yee

Read Arthur Miller’s steamy love letter to Marilyn Monroe.

Today in 1961, Marilyn Monroe filed for divorce from playwright Arthur Miller—a carefully chosen date, as she thought JFK’s inauguration would distract the media from the lows of her personal life. The pairing had always been surprising to Monroe’s adoring Read more >

By Walker Caplan

Colm Tóibín has been named the new Irish Fiction Laureate.

It is “quite an exciting time to be a reader in Ireland.” So says Colm Tóibín, who has just been named the new laureate for Irish fiction. Now you, a provocateur, might ask, “Isn’t it always an exciting time to Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

Here are the winners of the 2022 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence.

Yesterday, the American Library Association announced the winners of the 2022 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence. Tom Lin’s The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu was recognized in the Fiction category, while Hanif Abdurraqib’s A Little Devil in America was recognized in the Read more >

By Snigdha Koirala

Watch the new trailer for Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio adaptation.

Whatever he puts his weird, imaginative mind to (a dark, nightmarish movie about fascism, a Saturday morning cartoon for kids) Guillermo del Toro makes strange and beautiful stories. And judging by the short trailer below, his Netflix adaptation of Pinocchio, out Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

As a kid, George Orwell practiced black magic on a bully—and it worked.

Today marks the 72-year anniversary of the death of George Orwell, writer, journalist and scathing reviewer of Mein Kampf. Despite the distance between his lifetime and our own, it’s only this decade that we learned of a particularly surprising childhood Read more >

By Walker Caplan

Concerns arise that a Uganda novelist imprisoned for Tweets has been tortured.

In a grim reminder of the ever-tenuous position of truth-telling artists (the world over), Ugandan novelist Kakwenza Rukirabashaija appeared in court today—via video feed from prison—to answer charges that he “mocked the peace of President Yoweri Museveni.” How does one Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

Here are this year's finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Awards.

Tonight, the National Book Critics Circle announced the latest finalists for its annual awards in six categories: autobiography, biography, criticism, fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. Finalists for the Leonard Prize for the best first book, as well as the winners of Read more >

By Snigdha Koirala

There's a new Celeste Ng novel coming this fall.

Penguin Press announced today that it will publish Everything I Never Told You and Little Fires Everywhere author Celeste Ng’s new novel, Our Missing Hearts, on October 4th, 2022. The cover design has yet to be revealed. Our Missing Hearts Read more >

By Walker Caplan

Anthony Veasna So’s Afterparties will be developed for television.

Adaptation news: Deadline has reported that Garrett Basch’s new company Dive (What We Do in the Shadows, Reservation Dogs) has won the television rights to Anthony Veasna So’s bestselling story collection Afterparties. Dive plans to turn the collection into a Read more >

By Walker Caplan

8 books perfectly summed up with out-of-context Derry Girls.

If you’re anything like me, then you’ve probably been anxiously awaiting the third season of Derry Girls. The wit, the chaos, the green plaid skirts—it has been the best kind of levity to (somewhat) assuage these hellish days. Recently, I Read more >

By Snigdha Koirala

The young white supremacist sentenced to read the classics has now been sentenced to actual jail.

Bad news for all who believe books make us more empathetic: the young man who was sentenced to read more Jane Austen and Shakespeare after being charged with possessing a bomb-making manual, as well as hundreds of white supremacist, Neo-Nazi Read more >

By Walker Caplan

Sheila Heti turned her diaries into alphabetized autofiction. Now they're a newsletter.

The coin flips in Motherhood, the crowd-sourcing of Women in Clothes, the 2008 blog she ran about people’s Obama- and Clinton-related dreams: Sheila Heti is a master of the good conceit. Her latest: just preempting the release of her latest Read more >

By Walker Caplan

Here are this year's Edgar Allan Poe Award nominees.

The Mystery Writers of America has just announced the nominations for this year’s Edgar Allan Poe Award. Celebrating the 213th birthday of Edgar Allan Poe, the award recognizes the best titles in mystery fiction and non-fiction, as well as teleplays, Read more >

By Snigdha Koirala

13 of André Leon Talley's favorite books.

Legendary fashion icon and outsize personality André Leon Talley died this week at the age of 73. But Talley, of course, was not just a force in the fashion world, but also a a journalist, editor, and author in his Read more >

By Emily Temple