Before Nobel Laureate John Steinbeck became an essential part of the Western literary canon, he was an unpublished writer with three rejected novels to his name. (Relatable!) Apparently, one of these novels was a mystery called Murder at Full Moon, Read more >
It all started at 118 Milton Street in Brooklyn. In this house, beloved children’s book author Margaret Wise Brown was born. Even though she only spent the first five years of her life there, for a children’s book author especially, Read more >
If you, like me, love low-stakes literary gossip but hate Twitter, you should probably be reading the New York Times books section’s letters to the editor. Case in point: Cynthia Ozick’s recent response-in-verse to Lionel Shriver’s review of her novella, Antiquities. The Read more >
Earlier this week, we learned that Skyhorse Publishing is set to republish Blake Bailey’s Phillip Roth: The Biography after the book’s initial publisher, W.W. Norton, put the book out of print due to extensive, corroborated reports that Bailey had groomed, Read more >
Francis Spufford’s Light Perpetual, Claire Fuller’s Unsettled Ground, Sarah Schulman’s Let the Record Show, and Aminatta Forna’s The Window Seat all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. Brought to you by Book Marks, Lit Hub’s “Rotten Tomatoes for Read more >
Germany’s Goethe-Institut has just announced the winner of this year’s Helen & Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize, the German government-funded prize celebrating an outstanding literary translation from German into English published in the U.S. in the previous year. This year’s winner Read more >
Unflinching: This book is written in the present tense, which I told the author multiple times was a choice I disagreed with in our writing workshop. Do you belong to a writing workshop? Oh, you really must. They’re fantastic. Bracing: You Read more >
Exciting news—or dispiriting news for would-be collectors: a Columbia Law School textbook once owned by late Supreme Court justice and legal titan Ruth Bader Ginsburg sold yesterday to an anonymous bidder for $18,125 in Heritage Auctions’ Manuscripts Auction. The textbook Read more >
Fresh off the barnstorming success of her debut political thriller (While Justice Sleeps has shifted over 130,000 copies since its publication earlier this month), beloved Georgia politician and voting rights activist Stacey Abrams has just sold two more Avery Keane Read more >
Pankaj Mishra and Arundhati Roy, two of India’s most prominent and world-renowned authors, have this week spoken out against Penguin Random House India’s decision to republish Exam Warriors, a book of exam tips and advice by embattled Prime Minister Narendra Read more >
Originally, I wanted to find every literary reference in Bob’s Burgers, but the truth is there were too many to count. This is a very culturally with-it show. I would argue it rivals Gilmore Girls in the number of writers and book Read more >
Today at the opening of the International Literature Festival Dublin, Dublin’s Lord Mayor Hazel Chu announced that Valeria Luiselli has won the 2021 Dublin Literary Award for Lost Children Archive, her first English-language novel. At €100,000, the award is the Read more >
The largest bookstore in Gaza, the beloved Samir Mansour Bookshop, was destroyed on Tuesday by an Israeli airstrike. The shop, which was established in 2008, had thousands of books, including the largest collection of English literature in Gaza, and was Read more >
On 1 July 1999, Dr. Nina Simone gave a rare performance, one of her last in Britain. After the show, Australian multi-instrumentalist and composer (and bandmate of Nick Cave in both the Bad Seeds and Grinderman) Warren Ellis crept onto Read more >
Nikole Hannah-Jones, creator of the 1619 Project and winner of the Pulitzer Prize and a MacArthur fellowship, has been hired for a five-year term as a professor at UNC-Chapel Hill’s Hussman School of Journalism and Media—despite having been pursued by Read more >
Today, it was announced that Shola von Reinhold and Jacaranda Books have won the Republic of Consciousness Prize for Small Presses, which rewards outstanding literary fiction published by UK- and Ireland-based presses with no more than five full-time employees. Von Read more >
Interesting news for Matilda-heads, or Chocolate Factor-ites, or Witches: as the Irish News noted this morning, a handwritten letter by Roald Dahl, written to a fan in 1989, is up for auction with Hansons Auctioneers with a guide price of Read more >
Today, The Yale Review launched a new website: TYR. The website, designed by Pentagram, integrates the print publication with exclusive online-only content, including essays, columns, poetry, fiction, multimedia content, and more. The launch of the site allows all of the Read more >
The Association of University Presses has announced its selections for the 2020 AUPresses Book, Jacket, and Journal Show, now in its 56th year. The selected books are currently on virtual display; the Book, Jacket, and Journal Show Committee has not Read more >
On this day in 1930, playwright and activist Lorraine Hansberry was born on the South Side of Chicago. By the age of 29, she had produced A Raisin in the Sun. The seminal drama, the first play to be written Read more >
