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News, Notes, Talk

You can now read the only surviving full draft of a Jane Austen novel, in her very own handwriting.

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 >

By Aaron Robertson

WATCH: Tom Hanks tugs at your heartstrings in the first trailer for News of the World.

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 >

By Dan Sheehan

Anna Burns has won the International Dublin Literary Award for Milkman.

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 >

By Rasheeda Saka

The editor of Michelle Obama’s Becoming is starting a new publishing company.

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 >

By Literary Hub

Of course Clea DuVall will direct a show based on Tegan and Sara's memoir.

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 >

By Corinne Segal

Tim O’Brien recited poetry to himself to get through the war.

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 >

By Jonny Diamond

A letter from a poor Edgar Allan Poe sold for $125,000.

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 >

By Aaron Robertson

Today in weird literary tourism: there’s a Welsh spa named for Dylan Thomas’s Milk Wood

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 >

By Jonny Diamond

Toni Morrison's gorgeous, book-lined Manhattan loft is up for sale.

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 >

By Corinne Segal

14 new books to treat yourself to.

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 >

By Katie Yee

Ethan Hawke on performing Marilynne Robinson's Gilead.

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 >

By Literary Hub

You'll soon be able to stay in James Joyce's "House of The Dead"—and Sally Rooney isn't happy.

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 >

By Katie Yee

The first look at Barry Jenkins's adaptation of Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad

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 >

By Jonny Diamond

A bookstore that dwells in darkness, literally.

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 >

By Jonny Diamond

Here are the 2020 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award winners.

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 >

By Rasheeda Saka

The week in literary film and TV news.

“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 >

By Dan Sheehan

The Italian adaptation of Jack London's Martin Eden is a dreamlike, Romantic epic.

Near the end of Pietro Marcello’s Martin Eden, the 2019 film adaptation of Jack London’s 1909 novel, released today in the US, a withered Luca Marinelli as Eden tells a bemused audience, “The writer Martin Eden doesn’t exist. He is Read more >

By Aaron Robertson

Here are the best reviewed books of the week.

Xiaolu Guo’s A Lover’s Discourse, Rebecca Roanhorse’s Black Sun, David Leavitt’s Shelter in Place, and Craig Brown’s 150 Glimpses of the Beatles all feature among the best reviewed books of the week. Brought to you by Book Marks, Lit Hub’s “Rotten Tomatoes for Read more >

By Book Marks

We won't get to see Lupita Nyong’o star in Americanah after all.

Here’s one to add to the comically long list of disappointments 2020 has inflicted upon us: Americanah—the hotly-anticipated limited series adaptation of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s bestselling novel of the same name—will no longer be moving ahead at HBO. Americanah had been Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

Here's the shortlist for the 2020 Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction.

The UK literary prizes are still coming in hot! Today, the Baillie Gifford Prize announced its 2020 shortlist. The award, founded in 1999 following the end of the NCR Book Award for Nonfiction, celebrates the best non-fiction writing in the Read more >

By Rasheeda Saka