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News, Notes, Talk

The late John Prine is the first honorary poet laureate of Illinois.

When John Prine died earlier this year, there were a few things his obituary writers agreed on. If you weren’t a huge music fan, you might not have known who he was. If you knew who he was, you undoubtedly Read more >

By Aaron Robertson

Important: This season of Search Party features a rare Deborah Eisenberg cameo.

I am a huge fan of Search Party, the formerly-of-TBS-now-of-HBO Max comedy about a group of millennial friends who take it upon themselves to solve the mystery of a college acquaintance’s disappearance… with surprising results! The cast is fantastic, the writing Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

Lenny Kravitz announces his memoir, with very sexy results.

Lenny Kravitz—rockstar, progenitor of absurdly beautiful children, and innovator in the field of scarves—announced in a video on Twitter today that his memoir, Let Love Rule, is set for release on October 6. Of course, while “announced” is technically accurate Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

HBO just paid seven figures for the rights to Brit Bennett's The Vanishing Half.

At the close of one of the wildest, most hotly-contested rights auctions in recent memory—in which 17 different bidders duked it out for the film and TV rights to Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half—HBO has emerged victorious. The streaming giant will pay Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

Master and Margarita.">

Master and Margarita.">"This cannot be good." Baz Luhrmann on producing the maybe-cursed Master and Margarita.

This week, on Australian radio show The History Listen, producer Rosa Ellen asked fellow fans of Bulgakov’s novel to unpack its particular magic and enduring genius. One of those fans is Baz Luhrmann, who is producing an adaptation of the Master and Margarita.">Read more >

By Emily Temple

12 new books for the long weekend.

Somehow Fourth of July weekend is upon us. While you might not be spending it the way you usually do (big family barbecue, a day at the beach, crammed in the crowds trying to watch the Macy’s show), we do Read more >

By Katie Yee

Make some noise: here are the winners of CLMP's Firecracker Awards!

For over 50 years, the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses has been an amazing resource and megaphone for small presses and publications. CLMP has just announced the winners of their sixth annual Firecracker Awards, which celebrates the best independently Read more >

By Katie Yee

JK Rowling deletes praise of Stephen King on Twitter because he supports trans rights.

JK Rowling deleted praise of Stephen King on Twitter and I really want out of this timeline. Rowling’s insistence on “debating” the right of trans people to exist is exhausting and hurtful, and is perhaps best summed up here, by Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

Beam me up: here are the Locus Awards winners!

Over the weekend, the winners for this year’s Locus Awards were announced. For a little otherworldly, escapist fiction, read on! (Also, can we talk about this rocket-shaped trophy? The winners must be over the moon!) * SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL Charlie Read more >

By Katie Yee

Here's how I felt after attending a People's Townhall on publishing's "radical future."

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 >

By Aaron Robertson

The villagers from Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" are very concerned about this statue situation.

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 >

By Jessie Gaynor

Celebrate George Orwell's birthday by reading his (scathing) 1940 review of Mein Kampf.

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 >

By Dan Sheehan

Readers will have the chance to finish a rediscovered Louisa May Alcott story.

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 >

By Corinne Segal

Normal People is returning, set 40 years in the future, as Normal Older People.

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 >

By Emily Temple

Meet Ed Vaughn, an understated Black Power icon and former bookstore owner.

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 >

By Aaron Robertson

Citing history of homophobia writers call for Lady Emma Nicholson to step down as Booker VP.

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 >

By Jonny Diamond

For a next-level book promo video, eat the mushrooms that sprouted from your book about mushrooms.

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 >

By Jessie Gaynor

Thanks to the pandemic, the next Game of Thrones book could be done next year.

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 >

By Corinne Segal

Don DeLillo will publish his next novel, The Silence, in October.

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 >

By Emily Temple

Decades ago, Octavia Butler saw a "grim future" of climate denial and income inequality.

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 >

By Corinne Segal