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 >
The science fiction world is having a bit of a week. Today, New Zealand, the host of this year’s World Science Fiction Convention (WorldCon), virtually kicked off one of the world’s most popular sci-fi events. New Zealanders had been preparing for Read more >
Yesterday, MacDowell, a prestigious artists’ residency in New Hampshire—who has suspended their regular fellowship program due to the coronavirus pandemic—announced a “pilot program” for a virtual version of its famous retreat. It will certainly look a lot different than usual, Read more >
Have you ever dreamed of being immortalized within the pages of a James Patterson novel? Of living on, long after your bones have turned to dust and your headstone has been weathered into illegibility, as a firecracker love interest or Read more >
The winners for the 32nd Will Eisner Comic Industry Award were announced online on Friday night, despite some controversy over a voting glitch. In lieu of the usual San Diego Comic-Con, the award ceremony featured actor Phil LaMarr (of Pulp Read more >
Substack, the (apparently pretty well-funded) newsletter distribution company, has announced its second round of fellows, led by novelist and essayist Kaitlyn Greenidge. Greenidge is the only Senior Fellow of the ten, a title that carries with it a $100,000 grant. Read more >
As you continue to support your local indies, here are 20 new titles to be on the lookout for! This list features the hotly-anticipated new books by the likes of Laura van den Berg, Natasha Trethewey, Yiyun Li, Zadie Smith, Read more >
This year’s Booker Prize longlist includes some books you expected—and also quite a few books you didn’t, including eight (8) debuts out of the thirteen books. “It is an unusually high proportion, and especially surprising to the judges themselves, who Read more >
Elizabeth Gabler’s 3000 Pictures—a joint venture between a joint venture with Sony Pictures and Harper Collins—just closed a preemptive deal for Kazuo Ishiguro’s upcoming novel, Klara and the Sun. The highly-anticipated new novel from the 2017 Nobel Prize-winner is the story Read more >
54 years ago today, the iconic mid-century American poet Frank O’Hara was buried in Green River Cemetery, in Springs, New York, two days after being struck down by a jeep on Fire Island at the age of 40—a freakish tragedy Read more >
Irenosen Okojie, a Nigerian-British author, is this year’s winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing for her short story “Grace Jones.” The story, which appears in her 2019 collection Nudibranch, follows a Grace Jones impersonator in the aftermath of Read more >
What are you up to this summer? Planning an excursion to the woods? Kicking back with some good television and a beer? Alternatively, why don’t you come along with me for the ultimate socially-distanced leisure activity for our times: poring Read more >
