Jacqueline Woodson, author of Brown Girl Dreaming, was recently named a recipient of the MacArthur fellowship for her inventive approach to children’s and young adult fiction; her stories bring attention to Black joy along with the challenges that young Black people Read more >
Don DeLillo’s The Silence, Aoko Matsuda’s Where the Wild Ladies Are, Les Payne’s The Dead Are Rising: The Life of Malcolm X, and Heather Clark’s Red Comet: The Short and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath all feature among the best Read more >
On October 16th, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation announced that it would award a $750,000 grant to the Clifton House, an artist and writers workshop designed to honor the legacy of esteemed poet Lucille Clifton. Clifton was born in New Read more >
Ah, love: it is “a smoke rais’d with the fume of sighs; / Being purg’d, a fire sparkling in a lover’s eyes”; it “jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope”; it happens on Read more >
I can hardly remember what was happening in January of this year, much less what I was doing when I was an 18-year-old. We do have a good sense of what Jane Austen was up to, though. Historians are mostly certain Read more >
Paulette Jiles’ 2016 historical novel News of the World—about a traveling nonfiction storyteller and veteran, roaming the small towns of Texas in the aftermath of the Civil War, who agrees to transport a 10-year-old girl, taken in by the Kiowa Read more >
Today, Graywolf Press announced that Anna Burns’ Milkman has been selected as the winner of the International Dublin Literary Award. The Award, now celebrating its 25th year, is the world’s largest annual prize for a single work of fiction published in Read more >
It’s always good news when people want to invest in books, so we’re happy to hear that Molly Stern, the former SVP & Publisher of Penguin Random House’s Crown imprint, is starting a new publishing company in partnership with the Read more >
Thank you, universe: We’re getting a queer Canadian grunge-era comedy series about Tegan and Sara Quin directed by Clea DuVall, and there’s literally nothing I can do to make that sentence better. The show will be based on High School, the Read more >
Did you know there was a new Tim O’Brien documentary “released” this past spring? Yup, The War and Peace of Tim O’Brien was set to hit the festival circuit over the summer, but we all know what happened next. There Read more >
Oh, the Poe-like irony, a story to strike the freelancer’s heart like a lance. In 1847, a financially struggling Edgar Allan Poe wrote a letter to former Philadelphia mayor, dramatist, magazine editor, and lawyer Robert Taylor Conrad. The missive, noted Read more >
Yesterday we brought you news that the Dublin house immortalized by James Joyce’s “The Dead” will be converted to a luxury hotel; today, via the Bristol Post, we alert you to the booming tourist action around one of Dylan Thomas’s Read more >
If you have $5 million to throw around and are looking to up your work-from-home game—by a lot—then this is for you: the beautiful loft in Tribeca that Toni Morrison lived in until her death last year is up for sale Read more >
Tuesday again, huh? You know what keeps those Tuesday Blues at bay? A trip to your local indie, where you can get these new titles from Don DeLillo, Namwali Serpell, Lindy West—the list goes on! Go ahead. Treat yoself. Donna Meagle Read more >
Ethan Hawke, actor, novelist, and Generation X’s go-to movie-boyfriend, recorded a three-hour abridged version of Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead last month (You can buy tickets here). He shared some insight from the reading and what he thinks of Robinson (he likes her… Read more >
In 1775, a house was built in Dublin. This house eventually became a home to James Joyce’s great aunts, where they ran a music school in the 1890s. This house, of course (a “dark gaunt house on Usher’s Island”), was Read more >
We’ve known about this for almost three years, and here it is, the first look at Barry Jenkins epic adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad. The Underground Railroad – Preamble from Barry Jenkins on Vimeo. Read more >
How does one browse in a dark bookstore? Picture row upon row of faced-out books lit like tiny billboards floating in an inky black room, small candle lit café tables as little islands of light between hundreds of glowing covers… Read more >
The Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation announced the winners of its 2020 Legacy Awards on Friday, October 16th. The Awards, inaugurated in 2001, recognize and celebrate Black writers in the United States and of the diaspora for literary achievement. It Read more >
“Why read a book when you can watch a movie adaptation of said book?”, that’s what I always say. Better yet, just watch the trailer. Trailers are so slickly produced these days, it’s no wonder they have their own awards Read more >
