This morning, PR Newswire broke the news that Literati, an “innovative literary brand,” has just raised 40 million dollars in Series B funding. Among its investors is NBA giant Steph Curry. If you’re anything like me, you may have some Read more >
During this pandemic, a lot of people have started making sourdough and knitting and woodworking and running outside. Me? I’ve also got a quarantine hobby. It’s picking up trash from the street and bringing it into my home. When you Read more >
A win for weird fiction! Yesterday, Deadline announced that Claire Foy (The Crown, Unsane, First Man) is set to star in the Gillian Robespierre-directed adaptation of Melissa Broder’s critically acclaimed novel The Pisces. Foy will play Lucy, a burned-out PhD Read more >
Merriam-Webster.com—the online dictionary/thesaurus into which, if memory serves, the consciousness of 18th/19th century American lexicographer Noah Webster was uploaded by Vice President Al Gore back in 1996—this morning produced a massive dump (if CNN’s election team can use this terminology Read more >
If you’re on the hunt for new literary rabbit holes, today is your lucky day. The Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction, created by lexicographer Jesse Sheidlower (a former editor of both the OED and Random House Dictionaries) is “a comprehensive Read more >
Yesterday, The Hollywood Reporter announced that A+E Studios and ITV Studios America are partnering with Vikings and The Tudors writer Michael Hirst on a TV miniseries based on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Hirst will also executive produce, along The Great Gatsby is coming to the small screen.">Read more >
Drop your buffs! The reality TV show contestant Stephen Fishbach, most well-known as the strategically gifted runner-up of Survivor: Tocantins and slightly less well-known as one of People’s hottest bachelors of 2009, is now a full-time fiction writer, completing a Read more >
Today is the anniversary of one of the more charming letters in American history: Benjamin Franklin writing to his daughter Sally trashing the newly adopted Great Seal of America featuring a bald eagle (pictured above is the original proposed design Read more >
Now that a certain someone is banned from Twitter, that really begs the question: What are you going to do with all those hours you used to spend doomscrolling? I mean, I know we’re all still doomscrolling, but surely this frees Read more >
That’s right. Danielle Steel may not have had the easiest time writing during lockdown, but she’s still, you know, Danielle Steel, a woman who writes staggering numbers of best-selling books at an enormous desk handcrafted to look like a stack Read more >
There’s something so delightful about watching a movie or television show and spying a famous author on screen. It’s how I imagine a birdwatcher would feel if they spotted a rare bird while they were just walking to the grocery Read more >
There are teaser trailers and then there are teaser trailers. Sometimes all you get are a few maddeningly blurry flashes of action. Often it’s just snippet of ponderous dialogue over a slow-moving title card. But occasionally, very occasionally, a teaser Read more >
The Hollywood Reporter announced this morning that a new Harry Potter series is in early development at HBO Max. Though HBO Max and Warner Bros. said in a statement that “there are no Harry Potter series in development at the Read more >
Short of becoming a time machine for well-meaning Gen X slackers, I cannot imagine a grander afterlife for the humble phone booth than to be reincarnated as a cosy wee library. One day you’re a rusted urinal, all-but invisible to Read more >
This summer, we learned that Spotify was searching for someone to run an new audiobooks division, and now, the next chapter in that story has been made public: today Spotify released a collection of classic audiobooks on its platform, including Read more >
Yesterday, writer and book critic Michael Schaub announced all the finalists for the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Award, which honors the “finest books” published in English during the last year. The thirty finalists were selected across six categories—Autobiography, Biography, Read more >
After years of disheartening instances of “Republican politician-turned-author,” here we have a potential case of “author-turned-Republican politician,” and I gotta say… it doesn’t feel that much better! According to The Columbus Dispatch, Ohio Senator Rob Portman won’t seek re-election in 2022, Read more >
Honestly, every night around here is a little like Burns Night, the annual Scots tradition in honor of national poet-hero Robbie Burns: a little too much whisky, the inevitable descent into maudlin self-pity, and the consumption of barely edible food Read more >
Some news for self-published writers: this week, Publishers Weekly reported that Naver, Korea’s leading internet platform, is acquiring Wattpad for over $600 million in cash and stock. For those who aren’t among the 90 million people that used Wattpad in Read more >
Back when Paul Thomas Anderson was in high school, before his sweeping porn industry epic Boogie Nights became a hit, he and a few friends made the The Dirk Diggler Story: a half-hour-long proto-Boogie Nights narrated by Anderson’s father. The Read more >
