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News, Notes, Talk

20 new books to add your fall(!) reading list.

This week is a doozy! There are new titles from Lauren Groff, Maggie Nelson, Sandra Cisneros, Simone de Beauvoir, Joy Harjo, and (in case you haven’t heard) Sally Rooney. Not to mention the slate of debut authors and small press Read more >

By Katie Yee

Read the short story that won this year’s Moth Short Story Prize.

This week, The Moth, a quarterly printed arts and literature magazine, announced the winner of their 2021 short story prize, judged by Ali Smith: Janice Deal, for her short story “Lost City.” Deal’s debut novel, The Sound of Rabbits, is Read more >

By Walker Caplan

Read the poetry of Senegal’s first elected president.

This past Sunday marked the 61st anniversary of Léopold Sédar Senghor’s election as Senegal’s first democratic president, when the country gained independence from French colonial rule. And to honor the important day, I wanted to highlight Senghor’s role as a Read more >

By Snigdha Koirala

This year's Authors for Voices of Color auction includes lost chapters and query critiques.

Last year, Authors for Voices of Color, an initiative that “unites publishing professionals in the fight to dismantle systemic racism and elevate voices of color,” founded by Andrea Bartz and Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, raised over $14,000 for racial justice non-profits Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

This geologist-turned-pastry chef is living as an actual hobbit in the Italian countryside.

Here’s someone living their dream: Nicolas Gentile, a 37-year-old pastry chef, has purchased two hectares of land in the Italian countryside. There, he’s in the process of building a real-life Shire, inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien. Gentile has already built his Read more >

By Walker Caplan

Listen to this heartfelt, pandemic-inspired poem read by the late Michael K. Williams.

Over the holiday weekend, we lost the expansive, charismatic actor and producer Michael K. Williams. Born in 1966, the Brooklyn native grew up in the neighborhood of East Flatbush. And although many members of the general public seem to only Read more >

By Vanessa Willoughby

Please enjoy these sexy photos of Jean-Paul Belmondo reading sexily.

Yesterday was a very bad day for iconic, charismatic actors: we lost both Michael K. Williams and Jean-Paul Belmondo. Therefore it seems as good a moment as any to bless this cursed timeline with a few images of the latter Read more >

By Emily Temple

Here are the best reviewed books of August.

Stephen King’s Billy Summers, Anthony Veasna So’s Afterparties, Deborah Levy’s Real Estate, Alexandra Kleeman’s Something New Under the Sun, and Megan Abbott’s The Turnout all feature among the best reviewed books of the past month. Brought to you by Book Read more >

By Book Marks

Amanda Gorman is the new face of Estée Lauder.

Amanda Gorman’s whirlwind year is finishing up strong: her poetry collection Call Us What We Carry is set to release on December 7th, and this week, she’s been announced as the new face of Estée Lauder. But that’s not all: Read more >

By Walker Caplan

A Nazi sympathizer has been sentenced by a court to . . . read more Jane Austen.

It was Jane Austen that wrote, “The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid”—and this week, a British court is testing that theory by using novels to bring a Read more >

By Walker Caplan

Foreign Affairs is a perfect literary rom-com.

On this day in 1926, Alison Lurie was born. Lurie, a folklorist, children’s literature scholar, and the author of 10 novels, died last December at 94. I first encountered her work a few years ago, when I was poking around Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

You can now download Robin Marty's handbook to abortion access and support for free.

If you’ve been paying attention to the news this week, you surely know about Texas’s newly enacted abortion ban. According to the Texas Tribune, the bill, which went into effect on Wednesday, bans abortions as early as six weeks into Read more >

By Vanessa Willoughby

At long last, here’s the trailer for Amazon’s adaptation of The Wheel of Time.

Over three years since the series’s announcement, a trailer for Amazon Prime Video’s adaptation of Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time series has finally been released—and if we go by fans’ reactions, it was worth the wait. In the series, Read more >

By Walker Caplan

Faber is opening a Sally Rooney pop-up shop—but what does a Sally Rooney pop-up shop look like?

If you take her characters’ opinion as the truth, Sally Rooney hates book events. In Beautiful World, Where Are You, the character Alice—a successful young Irish novelist who has recently moved to a small town, hm, who does this remind Read more >

By Walker Caplan

Why Toni Morrison knew Song of Solomon had to be about men.

On this day in 1977, Toni Morrison’s bestselling novel Song of Solomon was published. The narrative follows Macon “Milkman” Dead III, the son of the richest Black family in his Midwestern town. At a young age, Milkman learns that humans Read more >

By Vanessa Willoughby

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Bridgerton."">Apparently the new Lady Chatterley's Lover will be "raunchier than Bridgerton."

You know what we all really deserve? Some new, unapologetically horny television. Even better if it’s horny literary television. Apparently, this is what we will soon receive in the form of Netflix’s adaptation of D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Though the book, Bridgerton."">Read more >

By Emily Temple

21 of the most unusual novelty bookshelves you can buy.

During the pandemic, my apartment has filled up with books. There are books on the floor. There are books under the couch. There are books in boxes and books in tote bags. There are books in piles in the closet. Read more >

By Emily Temple

Alicia Keys is adapting her own song “Girl on Fire” into a book.

The IP adaptation boom continues apace, this time with something fun: Alicia Keys is adapting her song “Girl on Fire” into a young adult graphic novel about a 14-year-old girl, Lolo Wright, and her telekinetic powers. Girl on Fire, co-written Read more >

By Walker Caplan

Salman Rushdie's next work of fiction will be published on his new Substack.

Acclaimed writers have been migrating to Substack in droves—and the latest to do so is Salman Rushdie. Rushdie will host his new work—including reviews, personal essays, and new, original fiction—on his Substack, Salman’s Sea of Stories. Some posts will be Read more >

By Walker Caplan

The French military’s newest weapon: science fiction writers.

The headlines about the benefits of reading are seemingly endless: according to various studies, reading makes you happier, less stressed, more socially adept, better at entrepreneurship, healthier, hotter, and “more awesome”. The logic behind several of these claims is that Read more >

By Walker Caplan