There are a few things in this life that we are told we can be certain of: death, taxes, blah blah. Also someone once said that the sun will come up tomorrow. (Sure.) You know what else is guaranteed though? Read more >
There’s much to celebrate at the moment: it’s spring, vaccinations are becoming widely available, Cadbury Cream Eggs are steeply discounted at Walgreen’s… But in case you’re still looking for a way to quiet your racing mind, may I recommend Oral Read more >
Today, the Cleveland Foundation announced the winners of its 86th Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards, an annual prize that recognizes “books that have made important contributions to our understanding of racism and our appreciation of the rich diversity of human cultures.” The Read more >
Today, the New York Public Library’s Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers announced its new class of Fellows, selected from a pool of 506 applicants from 48 countries. The class of 2021 is as follows: Academics: Read more >
N+1 has announced a new fiction prize in honor of n+1 contributor and brilliant short story writer Anthony Veasna So, who died in 2020. The newly established Anthony Veasna So Fiction Prize is an annual $5,000 award granted to a Read more >
Kaitlyn Greenidge’s Libertie, Sharon Stone’s The Beauty of Living Twice, Melissa Febos’ Girlhood, and Hanif Abdurraqib’s A Little Devil in America all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. Brought to you by Book Marks, Lit Hub’s “Rotten Tomatoes Read more >
On April 23, “one of the most important collections of illuminated manuscripts and early prints to have appeared at auction” will go on sale at Christie’s. This collection, the private collection of late philanthropists and collectors Elaine and Alexandre P. Read more >
Last night, the Cuomo administration finally released documents to The Buffalo News regarding Governor Andrew Cuomo’s book American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the Covid-19 Pandemic. Buffalo News reports that they requested the documents in August 2020; the administration had blamed Read more >
Money is like sex. Everybody wants it, most people have it, and nobody wants to talk about it. This resistance to transparency also applies to publishing (which is otherwise not like sex): Aside from last year’s brief flurry of #PublishingPaidMe Read more >
Today, and every year on April the first, we curse Geoffrey Chaucer. Why? Because he is (supposedly) personally responsible for the two worst holidays (“holidays”) known to humankind/the internet. I am referring, as you no doubt know, to Valentine’s Day Read more >
Today, Haruki Murakami cheered on incoming arts students in a speech at the entrance ceremony for his alma mater Waseda University in Tokyo, expressing his joy at being able to celebrate with them in person. And he also gave some Read more >
Depending on who you ask, Substack is either a haven for writers who have flounced away from their journalism jobs claiming that Cancel Culture forced them out, or a platform that allows writers to actually (maybe) pay their bills without Read more >
The year from hell has turned out to be a hell of a year for Eisner Award-winning cartoonist and New Yorker illustrator Adrian Tomine. First, his graphic memoir, The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist, got a pretty rapturous critical reception Read more >
Publishers are feeling the heat: a Maryland state bill that would give public libraries the right to license and lend e-books and other digital works that are available in the consumer market has just, as Publishers Weekly puts it, “sailed” Read more >
Okay, here’s a concept that makes you wish you’d invented it: a group of artists has turned the simple game of telephone—where a message is whispered from person to person, changing as it travels—into an global art project. Over the Read more >
On this day in 1855, Charlotte Brontë died in Haworth, West Yorkshire, England. Her official cause of death was cited as tuberculosis, but some scholars and historians have questioned this diagnosis. The Jane Eyre author is regarded as an essential Read more >
Can someone please share the Publishers Weekly deal code* with the New York state Joint Commission on Public Ethics? Because they’re having a hard time finding out any details around Governor Andrew Cuomo’s book deal for the prematurely triumphal American Read more >
On this day in 1969, Delacorte published Kurt Vonnegut’s sixth book and first bestseller: Slaughterhouse-Five. Three years later, despite being a very strange candidate for it (in my view), the book was adapted into a film, directed by George Roy Hill Read more >
Yesterday in 1986 we lost John Ciardi, a literary Renaissance man—poet, educator, Dante translator, Saturday Review editor, television host, and, as a late-career pivot, radio personality. During the last decade of his life, Ciardi delivered monologues on the etymologies of Read more >
This past Thursday, Seattle law firm Hagens Berman filed a proposed class-action lawsuit on behalf of Illinois bookseller Bookends & Beginnings, alleging Amazon colluded to fix prices on print books. The suit claims that Amazon’s restrictive contracts with the “Big Read more >
