Ask and you shall receive! Actor, producer, and children’s television icon, LeVar Burton, was just named as one of the new guest hosts for Jeopardy! The announcement seems to be a testament to the tenacity of fan support. In November, Read more >
Last night, Louise Erdrich was named the winner of the $35,000 Aspen Words Literary Prize, established by the Aspen Institute to honor a work of fiction that illuminates a vital contemporary issue and demonstrates the transformative power of literature on Read more >
I love a good aside. I live for literary intrusion. I want comments on my comments, discursive thinking, footnotes. I want to be distracted, taken off course for a while before being firmly set back down. What I’m saying is Read more >
This week, an open letter from the workforce of Simon & Schuster was circulated, demanding that S&S cancel Mike Pence’s two-book deal, as well as end their distribution deal with the far-right, murderous-cop-platforming Post Hill Press. The open letter called Read more >
I’m a huge Tennessee Williams fan, and a reasonably big Antoine Fuqua fan, so today’s news that the Training Day director will helm a movie adaptation of Williams’ Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece of mendacity and buried familial trauma, Cat on a Hot Read more >
Alyssa Collins, assistant professor of English Language and Literature and African American Studies at the University of South Carolina, has been awarded an Octavia E. Butler Fellowship by the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens for her project entitled Read more >
A wildfire displaced 4000 students and destroyed several buildings on the University of Cape Town’s campus over the weekend, including UCT’s Jagger Reading Room, which houses part of the UCT Libraries’ Special Collections. This is a major loss; UCT’s Special Read more >
According to the Los Angeles Times, Blake Bailey, author of a new and much-discussed biography of Philip Roth, has been dropped by his agency, the Story Factory, after allegations of “grooming and manipulation” along with other sexual misconduct. The allegations were Read more >
Have you ever wanted the inside scoop on midcentury Gothicist par excellence Daphne Du Maurier’s personal life? Did she really carry on illicit affairs with Gertrude Lawrence and Ellen Doubleday? What really prompted her retreat from public life? Was she Read more >
How quickly come the reasons for approving what we like—when what we like is a Jane Austen adaptation, and there are many reasons to approve! Deadline just announced that Dakota Johnson has signed on to star as Anne in Netflix Read more >
Mae West is an icon: literally, a representative symbol. In the popular imagination, Mae West stands in for a certain type of seduction—blonde, campy, one-liner-heavy. But though West is best known for her distinctive performances, she was also a controversial Read more >
Framed as a “statement from the workforce of S&S” an open letter is now circulating that calls out Simon & Schuster for maintaining its distribution relationship with Post Hill, a far right small press that publishes the likes of Matt Read more >
This Saturday is Independent Bookstore Day. So you basically have to stop by your local indie and stock up on books to your heart’s content! * Richard Wright, The Man Who Lived Underground (Library of America) The Man Who Lived Read more >
Sometimes the Internet is . . . good? Case in point: today, the algorithm directed me to this speedy visual recap of Pride and Prejudice, explained in the (cherry-picked) dulcet tones of John Mulaney. And you thought there was nothing Read more >
Multi-decorated author Elizabeth Acevedo is set to publish her first novel for adults in 2023. The currently untitled novel centers on a Dominican American family as they organize a wake for Rosa, a beloved matriarch who is still alive. (Rosa Read more >
If you’re still mourning the end of Michaela Coel’s fantastic series I May Destroy You (and you’ve already revisited her brilliant first show, Chewing Gum), here’s some welcome news: Coel’s first book, Misfits: A Personal Manifesto, is coming in September. My first Read more >
Sleuths rejoice! After twenty years, the Oxfordshire house where Dame Agatha Christie wrote many of her most famous crime novels is on the market once more with a guide price of over £2.75 million. It’s got to be said that Read more >
Patrick Radden Keefe’s Empire of Pain, Elizabeth McCracken’s The Souvenir Museum, Cynthia Ozick’s Antiquities, and Caleb Azumah Nelson’s Open Water all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. Brought to you by Book Marks, Lit Hub’s “Rotten Tomatoes Read more >
Tomorrow marks the 124th birthday of Thornton Wilder—and we’re celebrating by watching the opening monologue of the formally innovative Our Town delivered by another theatrical innovator, Spalding Gray. Spalding Gray as the Narrator in Our Town seems like perfect casting: Read more >
When I was a kid, there was nothing I loved more than a fresh new sketchbook (so much so that I tended to abandon them after filling out four or five drawings of people standing on tippie toes because I Read more >
