Have you ever come to the end of another agreeably humorous “Shouts & Murmurs” column, risen from your porcelain throne, tossed the New Yorker issue back into the stack, flushed (perhaps not in this order…), and thought to yourself I wonder Read more >
As Business Insider reports, Sean Hannity has recently changed the Latin motto on the cover of his new book, Live Free or Die: America (and the World) on the Brink, which he told viewers in March meant “Live free or America Read more >
Nick Miller, Nick Miller. By day, he’s a cranky bartender at a failing establishment. By night, he’s the author of Z is for Zombie and, most notably, The Pepperwood Chronicles. He’s hands-down one of the greatest fictional writers of our Read more >
Welcome to the Book Marks Questionnaire, where we ask authors questions about the books that have shaped them. This week, we spoke to The Night Circus and The Starless Sea author Erin Morgenstern * Book Marks: What book do you think Read more >
I couldn’t even narrow it down to 20 this time. That’s how good this week’s bounty is! We’ve got new books from Akwaeke Emezi, Morgan Jerkins, John Freeman, Karin Slaughter, Jeffrey Toobin, and (what?) Guillermo del Toro. We’ve got exciting Read more >
Have you ever wished MFA workshops could be more aggressively monetized? There’s an app for that! It’s Radish, a serialized fiction app which publishes material “produced in TV-style writers’ rooms,” and it’s just raised $63 million in Series A funding. Read more >
Please watch this video of Curbside Larry from the Barbara Bush Public Library in Harris County, Texas as he takes us through a dizzying tour of all the library has to offer you, the fine member of the reading public, Read more >
Which of your favorite literary characters would dutifully mask up, and which ones would act like human plumes? I have some thoughts. Atticus Finch Yeah, and he’s working on a really good metaphor about masks, society, and citizenship. Don’t worry—he’ll Read more >
Authors for Black Voices, a group created by authors Andrea Bartz and Jennifer Keishin Armstrong that describes itself as a collection of “publishing professionals eager to do what we can to combat racism and elevate Black voices,” is holding an Read more >
Entertainment Weekly reports today that Stephen King will release a new novel titled Later in March 2021, a time by which, hopefully, we will no longer need quarantine-themed reading lists. The book will feature the story of Jamie Conklin, a Read more >
On this day in 1878, Guy de Maupassant, not quite 28 years old, wrote to his mentor Gustave Flaubert with some complaints. Namely that “fucking women is as monotonous as listening to male wit. I find that the news in Read more >
Days after Tsitsi Dangarembga was longlisted for the prestigious Booker Prize for her novel This Mournable Body, Zimbabwean officials have taken her into custody during protests against government corruption. Agence France-Presse reported that Dangarembga and another protester were “bundled into Read more >
Right now, many of us are at home, sheltering in place with too much to do. Why then add yet another chore, reading poetry, to an already long list of to-dos? Because joy. Because we need at least one thing Read more >
Gore Vidal—essayist, historian, novelist, public intellectual, and Norman Mailer antagonist (Mailer headbutted him backstage at the Dick Cavett Show over a piece in the NYRB in which Vidal compared Mailer’s views of women to Charles Manson’s)—died on this day in Read more >
If you tuned into yesterday’s historic House Judiciary Subcommittee antitrust hearing, during which the top executives of some of the world’s largest tech companies tried convincing politicians that they weren’t monopolies, you may have heard a bookseller chime in during Read more >
Is the only thing that stands between you and wearing a mask a breezy summer read? Probably not, but one professor at Mercer University, Tennille Shuster, recently devised a creative way to emphasize the importance of diligent mask-wearing. Shuster, the Read more >
Today, W.W. Norton announced that they would be publishing Blake Bailey’s highly anticipated biography of Philip Roth on April 6, 2021. “Its 880 pages,” Hillel Italie writes, are the finished result of an undertaking that pre-dates not just Roth’s death Read more >
Matthew McConaughey—whose Publishers Marketplace announcement describes him as an “Academy Award-winning actor, teacher at the University of Texas, and self-proclaimed pickle expert”—has written a book! Sadly, it doesn’t sound like it has anything to do with pickles. Instead, it’s a Read more >
Here are some facts about “Sinkhole,” a short story by Leyna Krow, author of I’m Fine, But You Appear to be Sinking: 1. It is 1,586 words long. 2. It was acquired by Universal Pictures and Jordan Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions Read more >
I know that fingers can’t “plod,” but that is what they are doing now, delivering upsetting news that encapsulates this shitty year. As Hong Kong teeters on the edge of a serious coronavirus outbreak and democratic institutions continue losing a war Read more >
