During a virtual town hall last night, as a group of four friends were discussing what it was like to work as people of color in publishing, I thought of the things I’d valued blindly in elementary and high school, Read more >
If you haven’t read “The Lottery” lately, there’s never been a better time—especially if you, like me, enjoy feeling like you’re hearing your favorite dead writers weigh in on world events. Tomorrow is also the day the story’s titular lottery Read more >
One year after the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia (and a full year before the New York Times decided it was a good idea to publish an excerpt from Der Führer’s poisonous opus), celebrated writer, literary critic, and vocal opponent of totalitarianism Read more >
Violating the unspoken rule that one’s half-finished teenage stories should disappear forever, the Strand Magazine will publish an unfinished Louisa May Alcott draft that she began and abandoned in the late 1840s. Titled “Aunt Nellie’s Diary,” the draft, which is Read more >
The recent adaptation of Sally Rooney’s beloved bestseller Normal People ends, like the novel, on a bit of a cliffhanger: after years of on agains and off agains, Connell gets accepted to a writing program in New York, and Marianne Read more >
It was my best case scenario. Not only did Edward Vaughn pick up the phone, but he was willing and eager to speak. At 85 years old, he had way more energy than me, 60 years his junior, when I Read more >
A host of writers (UK and otherwise) are making public calls for Lady Emma Nicholson of Winterbourne to be removed from her vice president position at the Booker Foundation because of her consistently homophobic and transphobic views. Damian Barr, Marlon Read more >
Based purely on his excellent name, I assume Merlin Sheldrake was voted Most Likely to Write a Book About How Fungi Changed the World in high school. And, if you had any doubt that Sheldrake is committed to his brand, Read more >
When he’s not watching the NFL draft or buying historic railway stations, George R.R. Martin has spent the pandemic writing… a lot. Martin wrote on his blog that as he spends his time isolated in “an actual cabin in the mountains,” Read more >
You know what we could probably use in 2020? Some Don DeLillo. Lucky for us, Scribner has just announced plans to publish DeLillo’s next novel, The Silence, on October 20, 2020. The publisher describes it as “a novel about five Read more >
In 1995, Digital Diaspora, a organization based in the UK, hosted “40 Acres and a Microchip,” a conference that gathered Black writers and intellectuals to discuss the future of digital technology. Octavia Butler, who would have turned 73 this week, Read more >
We never really got over the typewriter. Yes, we have shiny laptops now that weigh less than two pounds apiece, sleek machines that allow you to write as much as you want, that can eradicate your mistakes at the touch Read more >
As libraries begin to reopen around the country, patrons are excited to get back to borrowing books—but they’re also still nervous about COVID-19, which is understandable. At least some of them have been “getting creative” in their attempts to protect Read more >
I purchased an independent bookstore in Salisbury, North Carolina just six months ago, after taking leave from my career as a foreign service officer with the U.S. Department of State. After tours in Afghanistan, India, and other cities overseas, I Read more >
Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy has long been one of the great unadaptable science fiction works (read more on that here, along with a catalogue of Asimov’s awful serial harassment of women), but after 50 years, it has finally made it Read more >
As many of us head into our fourth month of isolation, our at-home activities are getting . . . unusual. So today, if you’ve already voted (if you’re in Kentucky or New York) and called your representatives about defunding the Read more >
You definitely shouldn’t go to the beach or the pool, so here are 13 brand-new books to dive into instead! * Ottessa Moshfegh, Death In Her Hands (Penguin Press) “…a darkly comic, brutal examination of the mucky corners of the Read more >
Last Friday, Neil Gaiman’s American Gods celebrated its 19th publication anniversary. Earlier this year, The Annotated American Gods was published. Leslie Klinger, the attorney/genre fiction annotator/writer/Sherlock Holmes super fan who annotated the new edition answered a few of my questions about the book over email. Read more >
Around these parts, there are few things we love more than ogling beautiful book covers—and it turns out, even the “book” part is negotiable. Enter: designer and illustrator Matt Stevens’ ongoing project (and soon-to-be book) Good Movies as Old Books, Read more >
After spending the week getting destroyed by Gen Z on TikTok, here’s some good news for millennials: every 90s kid’s favorite portmanteau-titled book series is finally(?) getting a film adaptation. For the unacquainted(/Irish), the Animorphs were a scrappy gang of Read more >
