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News, Notes, Talk

Here's the winner of the 2021 Helen & Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize.

Germany’s Goethe-Institut has just announced the winner of this year’s Helen & Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize, the German government-funded prize celebrating an outstanding literary translation from German into English published in the U.S. in the previous year. This year’s winner Read more >

By Walker Caplan

The language of blurbs, decoded.

Unflinching: This book is written in the present tense, which I told the author multiple times was a choice I disagreed with in our writing workshop. Do you belong to a writing workshop? Oh, you really must. They’re fantastic. Bracing: You Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

Peek inside Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s annotated law school textbook.

Exciting news—or dispiriting news for would-be collectors: a Columbia Law School textbook once owned by late Supreme Court justice and legal titan Ruth Bader Ginsburg sold yesterday to an anonymous bidder for $18,125 in Heritage Auctions’ Manuscripts Auction. The textbook Read more >

By Walker Caplan

Doubleday is doubling down on Stacey Abrams thrillers.

Fresh off the barnstorming success of her debut political thriller (While Justice Sleeps has shifted over 130,000 copies since its publication earlier this month), beloved Georgia politician and voting rights activist Stacey Abrams has just sold two more Avery Keane Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

Two of India's most famous writers are protesting the reissue of a Narendra Modi exam book.

Pankaj Mishra and Arundhati Roy, two of India’s most prominent and world-renowned authors, have this week spoken out against Penguin Random House India’s decision to republish Exam Warriors, a book of exam tips and advice by embattled Prime Minister Narendra Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

Bob's Burgers is the most literary TV show ever. (Arguably, anyway.)

Originally, I wanted to find every literary reference in Bob’s Burgers, but the truth is there were too many to count. This is a very culturally with-it show. I would argue it rivals Gilmore Girls in the number of writers and book Read more >

By Katie Yee

Valeria Luiselli has won the world's richest prize for a novel written in English.

Today at the opening of the International Literature Festival Dublin, Dublin’s Lord Mayor Hazel Chu announced that Valeria Luiselli has won the 2021 Dublin Literary Award for Lost Children Archive, her first English-language novel. At €100,000, the award is the Read more >

By Walker Caplan

Gaza's largest bookstore has been destroyed.

The largest bookstore in Gaza, the beloved Samir Mansour Bookshop, was destroyed on Tuesday by an Israeli airstrike. The shop, which was established in 2008, had thousands of books, including the largest collection of English literature in Gaza, and was Read more >

By Emily Temple

Here's the cover for musician Warren Ellis' new book.

On 1 July 1999, Dr. Nina Simone gave a rare performance, one of her last in Britain. After the show, Australian multi-instrumentalist and composer (and bandmate of Nick Cave in both the Bad Seeds and Grinderman) Warren Ellis crept onto Read more >

By Literary Hub

UNC decided not to offer Nikole Hannah-Jones tenure after a conservative freak-out.

Nikole Hannah-Jones, creator of the 1619 Project and winner of the Pulitzer Prize and a MacArthur fellowship, has been hired for a five-year term as a professor at UNC-Chapel Hill’s Hussman School of Journalism and Media—despite having been pursued by Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

The Republic of Consciousness Prize for Small Presses has split its prize money among the longlist.

Today, it was announced that Shola von Reinhold and Jacaranda Books have won the Republic of Consciousness Prize for Small Presses, which rewards outstanding literary fiction published by UK- and Ireland-based presses with no more than five full-time employees. Von Read more >

By Walker Caplan

Roald Dahl’s secrets for writing children’s literature are officially up for auction.

Interesting news for Matilda-heads, or Chocolate Factor-ites, or Witches: as the Irish News noted this morning, a handwritten letter by Roald Dahl, written to a fan in 1989, is up for auction with Hansons Auctioneers with a guide price of Read more >

By Walker Caplan

The Yale Review has launched TYR, an online magazine.

Today, The Yale Review launched a new website: TYR. The website, designed by Pentagram, integrates the print publication with exclusive online-only content, including essays, columns, poetry, fiction, multimedia content, and more. The launch of the site allows all of the Read more >

By Vanessa Willoughby

These are the best university press book designs of 2020.

The Association of University Presses has announced its selections for the 2020 AUPresses Book, Jacket, and Journal Show, now in its 56th year. The selected books are currently on virtual display; the Book, Jacket, and Journal Show Committee has not Read more >

By Emily Temple

This random list of things Lorraine Hansberry liked and disliked is delightful.

On this day in 1930, playwright and activist Lorraine Hansberry was born on the South Side of Chicago. By the age of 29, she had produced A Raisin in the Sun. The seminal drama, the first play to be written Read more >

By Vanessa Willoughby

John Cleese has no idea how many bookstores there are in America.

John Cleese doesn’t know much about American bookstores but nonetheless feels confident to tweet about the subject. Looking at the bookshops where you can buy Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Bomber, I see that some States offer only one bookshop: Nebraska, N Read more >

By Jonny Diamond