The emoticon was invented on September 19, 1982, by Dr. Scott Fahlman, a professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, in Pittsburgh. He and his colleagues were looking for a solution to misunderstandings of tone on an “electronic bulletin Read more >
As the India’s horrific COVID surge intensifies, a group of authors from around the world (led by the narrative nonfiction writer Sonia Faleiro) have come together to support the essential work of Mission Oxygen India, an organization dedicated to helping Read more >
Any writer will tell you that rejection is as much a part of the game as procrastination, self-loathing, or em dashes. Of course, if you’re anything like me, you might secretly suspect that the lauded writers who insist on Twitter Read more >
Literature can speak to us. In this case, literally: Danish electronics company Bang & Olufsen has designed a new wireless speaker that resembles a book. The sleek ten-inch tall speaker fits neatly into a bookshelf and is nine hundred dollars. Read more >
In 1938, Of Mice and Men, a play adapted from Paul Walker lookalike John Steinbeck’s original 1937 novel and directed by George Kaufman, won the New York Drama Critics’ Circle award for Best Play. Steinbeck responded to the news of Read more >
Exciting news: Deadline reported this morning that the screen rights to Freshwater and The Death of Vivek Oji author Akwaeke Emezi’s forthcoming romance novel You Made A Fool of Death with Your Beauty have been purchased by Amazon Studios in Read more >
Today, the UK’s Women’s Prize for Fiction announced the shortlist for this year’s prize, which seeks to recognize the best fiction written by women every year, to the tune of £30,000, and a bronze figurine known as the “Bessie.” This Read more >
Two months ago, Marieke Lucas Rijneveld stepped down from the position of Dutch translator for Amanda Gorman’s inauguration poem “The Hill We Climb” after journalists and poets raised concerns about a white translator’s unfitness to translate a poem authored by Read more >
Danielle Evans, author of The Office of Historical Corrections and Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self, has won The New Literary Project’s annual Joyce Carol Oates Prize, a $50,000 award that recognizes “a midcareer fiction writer who has earned Read more >
Huge news: Kimberly Denise Jones—aka rap legend Lil’ Kim—has written a “deeply personal and revealing” memoir, and we get to read it later this year. THE QUEEN BEE, written with Kathy Iandoli, will be published in November 2021 by Hachette Read more >
Blood Meridian or the Evening Redness in the West, the 20th century’s most cosmically terrifying work of literary fiction, celebrates its 36th publication anniversary this week. McCarthy’s bloody, gnostic opus is the story of “the kid,” a battlesome teenage runaway Read more >
Do we really need another version of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s ubiquitous classic? Probably not, but I guess this is what happens when story calcifies into myth: its trace elements show up everywhere, forever. And now it’ll be on Broadway! At Read more >
On this day in 1934, the late Lois Duncan was born Lois Duncan Steinmetz in Philadelphia. Her parents, Joseph and Lois Steinmetz, were noted photographers who contributed to publications such as Life and The Saturday Evening Post. When she was Read more >
As more and more people get vaccinated, I’m both excited for indoor spaces to open back up and grateful for the public outdoor spaces that made this year much more joyful—so I’m obviously obsessed with this forest library that strikes Read more >
Before Pale Fire, or Pnin, or Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov was just like some of us: sending poems to the New Yorker. Nabokov—already famous in Europe for his Russian-language works—was suddenly plunged back into obscurity when he relocated to America, and Read more >
Everybody has at least one book in them, or so we all like to tell ourselves. But maybe you don’t really need a book—maybe all you need is a book cover. In that case, Canadian designer Steve St. Pierre has Read more >
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