I recently discovered the art of Rick Beerhost, a printmaker, painter and sculptor from Grand Rapids, Michigan, who creates, among other things, many paintings of young women reading books. Often the women have their eyes obscured—hummingbirds are favored; the influence Read more >
Over the years, Lydia Davis has gifted us with dozens of interviews chronicling her relationship to literature, laying out her writing process, and analyzing the many craft-related choices that writers make every day. Today is her birthday and a great Read more >
One month after controversy over an anti-racism pledge led most board members of the National Book Critics Circle to resign, the organization has announced its newest slate of board members. In June, a working committee led by Hope Wabuke drafted Read more >
Wishbone—a kids’ series which aired on PBS from 1995-97, in which a Jack Russell terrier, surrounded by a cast of humans, acts out works of classic literature (while the kids in his orbit navigate vaguely thematically related kid problems)—is getting Read more >
Lorrie Moore has written a kind of ecstatic, intergenerational, theses-nailed-to-the-door review of Sally Rooney’s Normal People (both the novel and the TV show). I like the fiction of both Moore and Rooney. I am also a Gen X’er. I think Read more >
On January 1, 2021, The Great Gatsby will become the latest masterwork of 20th century literature to enter the public domain, and because time and tide wait for no man, just a few days later, on January 5, we’ll all be Read more >
Lisa Lucas is stepping down as executive director of the National Book Foundation to become Senior Vice President & Publisher of Pantheon and Schocken Books. According to a press release from the NBF Lucas, who took over the ED role Read more >
Andrew Weissmann, who served as a prosecutor for Robert Mueller during an investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, is releasing a book this fall—and says it will include details on the investigation’s “mistakes.” Random House will publish Where Read more >
Every year, the UK’s Prospect releases a list of the top 50 thinkers in the world and this year is no different—except that 2020 is very different, and so this year’s list is explicitly branded as “the world’s top 50 thinkers for the Read more >
A recent advice-seeker in Slate’s Dear Prudence column wrote to ask Prudence (AKA Danny M. Lavery)’s opinion on their boyfriend’s expressed interest in some good old-fashioned Middlemarch role-play. “My boyfriend recently brought up the hypothetical idea of ‘solemn play’—someone who has Read more >
It’s been quite a year for Colson Whitehead! First, he won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction (again) and then he received the Orwell Prize for political fiction. And now the Library of Congress is honoring him with their lifetime achievement prize. Read more >
Oh, glorious day! Bookstores across the country are opening up again. (My local Greenlight is browsable as of this week—I’m not crying, you’re crying.) As you cross the threshold of your favorite local indie for the first time in months, you Read more >
Probably, yes. Back when I had time to read for many hours a day I devoured Seth’s 1,300-page, 1993 epic of love, class, politics, and just about everything else, all of it set against post-partition India’s roiling transition from colonial Read more >
It has recently come to my attention that Jane Austen’s former Bath home is available to rent for your writing retreat/pandemic escape plan through Airbnb. You can sleep under the same roof (er, approximately) as the literary legend for a Read more >
The owners of Greenlight Bookstore, which has two Brooklyn locations, came forward this week to take responsibility for “negative experiences of Black customers and employees in our stores” with a commitment to improving. In an open letter published Wednesday, co-owners Read more >
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust, the man perennially in search of lost time, was born on this day in 1871. The ruminative frenchman is of course best known for his mammoth seven-volume novel À la recherche du temps perdu, Read more >
I am clearly a coastal elite out of touch with how people really read* because I did not know there’s a robust, overcrowded field of sports-themed romance novels. This is one of the things I learned in this feature at Read more >
The National Book Foundation has announced that this year’s National Book Awards events—including the 71st annual ceremony—will be held digitally, due to the ongoing, not-even-remotely-controlled, coronavirus pandemic. Lisa Lucas, the National Book Foundation’s Executive Director, said of the decision,”As a Read more >
It’s the audio version that I want. Wouldn’t you? Mariah Carey’s memoir, The Meaning of Mariah Carey, is set to come out this fall. Carey herself will be reading the audiobook, which will feature occasional musical interludes. Carey’s career has had Read more >
“I, Ennio Morricone, am dead. This is an announcement for all my dear friends, too many to name here. There is a reason for this farewell, as it is my wish to have my funeral celebrated privately: I don’t want Read more >
