The New York Public Library has announced its finalists for the twenty-first annual Young Lions Fiction Award, which is given each year to an American writer age 35 or younger for a work of fiction. The finalists were chosen by Read more >
If you’re a Lord of the Rings fan and have three minutes to spare, please spare them to contribute to an oral history of Tolkien fandom! Building on Marquette University’s extensive J.R.R. Tolkien Collection, which includes original Tolkien documents and Read more >
Today, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation announced the recipients of its 2021 fellowships, chosen through a peer-review process from nearly three thousand applicants. Of the 184 recipients—“exceptional individuals in pursuit of scholarship . . . and creation”—26 were awarded Read more >
Today, the Center for Fiction announced that after an extensive national search, Traci Lester has been named as the organization’s next Executive Director. Lester comes to the Center for Fiction from the National Dance Institute, where she served as Executive Read more >
Yes, you read that right. I’m about to give you the perfect book recommendation based on the way you prepare eggs. Why? Maybe it’s because Easter just happened so I have a lot of pastel-dyed, hard-boiled beauties in my fridge right Read more >
It’s William Wordsworth’s 251st birthday today, and we’re celebrating by taking a look at people who didn’t like him. (Why not?) For someone who had such wonder and amazement in his heart for, say, a mountain, Wordsworth was not a Read more >
Today marks the occasion of what would have been French writer Violette Leduc’s 114th birthday. Leduc, who died of breast cancer in 1972, is perhaps best known for creating a stir among the hard-to-shock French intelligentsia with her impressionistic, sexually Read more >
This morning, the brilliant Helen DeWitt, author of The Last Samurai, Lightning Rods, and Some Trick, posted a devastating Twitter thread to which many, many people in America can, unfortunately, probably relate: DeWitt had a medical emergency in December which resulted Read more >
The American Library Association has released their annual list of the most challenged books of 2020 (books with the most attempts to censor or ban them). The list is studded with books about societal inequity and discovering your identity—you know, Read more >
Exciting adaptation news: A24 and Rhombus Media have optioned the rights to Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer, Nguyen’s Pulitzer-winning debut novel about a half-French, half-Vietnamese army captain who serves as a communist double agent after the fall of Saigon. The Read more >
I’ve always been a fan of Tom Waits. But I was a huge fan of Tom Waits in my late teens and early twenties when his whiskey-soaked romanticism, all burnt-out and busted, was soundtrack to my fantasies of life on Read more >
The Folio Society‘s latest publication is a massive edition of all 118 of Philip K. Dick’s short stories, presented in this shockingly bright four-volume set. Their edition of The Complete Short Stories was designed by independent studio La Boca and Read more >
It’s been a month since the release of Cherry, the big-budget adaptation of Nico Walker’s debut novel-from-life about an Iraq veteran turned heroin addict turned bank robber. Incredibly, Cherry (the book), lauded as a “miracle of literary serendipity” and “epic Read more >
Ah, the Yorkshire moors of Wuthering Heights. Windy, winding, dangerous, dark, and oh so very moody. (Just like Heathcliff’s soul! Argh!) Or at least they used to be. Now the landscape that inspired Emily Brontë’s classic romance is a common Read more >
And it’s about damn time. Yes, the former Nirvana drummer and current Foo Fighters frontman is, after 30 wildly successful, gloriously maned years in the business, putting it all down on paper. Earlier today, Dey Street Books announced that they Read more >
Deesha Philyaw has won the 2021 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for her debut short story collection The Secret Lives of Church Ladies. The collection was chosen for this year’s prize by judges Charles Finch, Bernice L. McFadden, and Alexi Zentner, Read more >
Craving some new Lord of the Rings-related media? While you wait for the Amazon Prime series, have a laugh and watch this 30-year-old television adaptation of The Fellowship of the Ring, courtesy of Russian channel 5TV. The 1991 film aired once, Read more >
Your Tuesday book news of note: Olive Kitteridge and My Name is Lucy Barton author Elizabeth Strout has a new novel set for publication. Here’s the description of Oh William!, out from Random House on October 19: Oh William! . Read more >
Today would have been the 104th birthday of everyone’s favorite surrealist painter-cum-novelist, Leonora Carrington. To celebrate, I recommend spending your lunch break watching Leonora Carrington and the House of Fear (1992), a documentary based around a trip to Carrington’s Mexico Read more >
Last year, when New York City was the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak in America, Bradley Tusk and Howard Wolfson decided to create a new annual award, the Gotham Book Prize, as part of an effort to “honor New York Read more >
