This has been an exciting month for Kaveh Akbar. Earlier this month, the author of Calling a Wolf a Wolf was named poetry editor of The Nation, a glittering position once held by writers like Langston Hughes, Anne Sexton, and William B. Read more >
When we were in school, Tuesdays were, arguably, the best weekday. The cafeteria likely nurtured your young, hopeful soul with Taco Tuesday. A crunchy shell, baked beans, hot sauce, melted cheese! And now, as adults who love to read, we Read more >
The results are in, and the list of most challenged books from the last decade is a mix of American classics, LGBTQ-themed books, and stories about female agency and empowerment. In other words, all the books that we should be Read more >
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof—Tennessee Williams’ sultry southern storm of a play about greed, deceit, self-delusion, sexual desire and repression, homophobia, sexism, and the looming specter of death—has had a curious life. Indeed, you could argue that Cat has actually Read more >
Over the weekend, Deadline reported that Chris Hemsworth, Miles Teller and Jurnee Smollett have been cast in Spiderhead, Netflix’s adaptation of George Saunders’ short story “Escape from Spiderhead,” which first appeared in The New Yorker in 2010, and later in his celebrated Read more >
I always loved giving my son a picture book rich in detail and watching him get lost in it, thereby gaining a few moments of peace and grown-up solitude—but now science is telling me I may have made him dumber.* Read more >
Within an hour of hearing that she had won the Arthur C. Clarke Award, a top honor given to science fiction published in the UK, Namwali Serpell also heard the news that the police officers who killed Breonna Taylor would Read more >
Graham Swift’s Here We Are; Natalie Zina Walschots’ Hench; Christina Lamb’s Our Bodies, Their Battlefields; and Laila Lalami’s Conditional Citizens all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. Fiction 1. Here We Are by Graham Swift 8 Rave • 5 Read more >
We’re a little more than a month out from Election Day and the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list is looking predictably odd. In a year when books about anti-racism have reached unprecedented sales, so too has the tide of journalistic blockbusters Read more >
Are you happy in your current book world job? Do you arise each morning with a sense of purpose? Does social isolation, political turmoil, and inclement fall weather agree with you? Can you turn up to work barefoot and go Read more >
Traveling might be tricky these days, but that probably wouldn’t have stopped F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. In their honor, and because it’s F. Scott’s birthday today, it might be the right time to book a (socially distanced) trip to Read more >
Remember the episode of The West Wing with the filibuster? While the rest of the staff is running around the White House, trying to get shit done, Sam Seaborn is sitting in the cafeteria, listening to the filibuster unfold on the Read more >
There’s big news in poetry (drumroll, please): Today, the American Academy of Poets announced that Nikky Finney has won the Wallace Stevens Award, which comes with a whopping $100,000 purse. The prize, established in 1994, is conferred annually to honor Read more >
When John Bolton was preparing to publish The Room Where It Happened, his memoir of serving in the Trump White House, he and his legal team took the routine step of submitting it for review at the National Security Council. Read more >
The Arthur C. Clarke Award, named in honor of the eponymous author, is the United Kingdom’s most prestigious prize for science fiction first published in the UK. The prize comes with an award plaque and a cash prize of £2020.00. Read more >
Every year, TIME publishes the TIME 100: a list of the 100 most influential people of the year. Every year, the list contains a mix of global political leaders, cultural icons, medical pioneers, artists, athletes, scientists, moguls, and those whose fields are less easily Read more >
Natalie Portman knows a thing or two about fairy tales. Portman’s turn as a dancer whose life goes awry in Black Swan (2010) was, famously, a brooding take on Pyotr Tchaikovksy’s most famous ballet. Swan Lake itself was likely inspired by Russian and German Read more >
Well, beautiful might not exactly be the word—perhaps disquietingly arresting? Chinese architecture firm x+living seems to be channeling the synaptic afterimages of Borges’s brain in their dizzying design for a bookstore in the city of Dujiangyan, in the southwest of Read more >
In the latest chapter of Edward Snowden’s legal battle over his 2019 book Permanent Record, a federal judge has ruled that Edward Snowden needs to forfeit about $1 million in speaking fees and $4 million from other book-related earnings to Read more >
On this day in 1835, history’s most macabre literary lovebirds ghouled their way to Baltimore City Hall to file for a marriage license. At the time, Poe was a gloomy 27-year-old West Point graduate and struggling poet, recently dismissed from Read more >
