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News, Notes, Talk

Look inside the only surviving copy of Joseph Pulitzer’s secret code book.

Tomorrow, we celebrate the 174th birthday of Joseph Pulitzer, now most well-known for establishing the Pulitzer Prizes with his endowment to Columbia University. But in his time, he was an elected Democratic congressman from New York fighting corruption, and the Read more >

By Walker Caplan

Time to rewatch this iconic performance of Where the Wild Things Are.

Today, April 9th, marks the fifty-eight publication anniversary of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are. Perhaps the most beloved children’s book of the latter half of the 20th century, Sendak’s gorgeously-illustrated tale of a young boy in a wolf suit Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

"Nobody ever made fun of him, but I did." Orson Welles on his friendship with Hemingway.

In a 1974 interview with Michael Parkinson, Orson Welles sat in a big leather chair, smoking a big ol’ cigar, and discussed his “very close friend” Ernest Hemingway. “We had a very strange relationship,” he explained. “I never belonged to his Read more >

By Emily Temple

Here's the shortlist for NYPL's 2021 Young Lions Fiction award.

The New York Public Library has announced its finalists for the twenty-first annual Young Lions Fiction Award, which is given each year to an American writer age 35 or younger for a work of fiction. The finalists were chosen by Read more >

By Emily Temple

Are you a Tolkien fan? Contribute to this oral history collection.

If you’re a Lord of the Rings fan and have three minutes to spare, please spare them to contribute to an oral history of Tolkien fandom! Building on Marquette University’s extensive J.R.R. Tolkien Collection, which includes original Tolkien documents and Read more >

By Walker Caplan

Here are the literary Guggenheim Fellows of 2021.

Today, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation announced the recipients of its 2021 fellowships, chosen through a peer-review process from nearly three thousand applicants. Of the 184 recipients—“exceptional individuals in pursuit of scholarship . . . and creation”—26 were awarded Read more >

By Walker Caplan

Traci Lester has been named as the Center for Fiction’s new Executive Director.

Today, the Center for Fiction announced that after an extensive national search, Traci Lester has been named as the organization’s next Executive Director. Lester comes to the Center for Fiction from the National Dance Institute, where she served as Executive Read more >

By Walker Caplan

What to read next based on your favorite... way to make eggs.

Yes, you read that right. I’m about to give you the perfect book recommendation based on the way you prepare eggs. Why? Maybe it’s because Easter just happened so I have a lot of pastel-dyed, hard-boiled beauties in my fridge right Read more >

By Katie Yee

Did anyone actually . . . like William Wordsworth?

It’s William Wordsworth’s 251st birthday today, and we’re celebrating by taking a look at people who didn’t like him. (Why not?) For someone who had such wonder and amazement in his heart for, say, a mountain, Wordsworth was not a Read more >

By Walker Caplan

Vive the erotic far left! Why Violette Leduc’s The Taxi needs a new translation.

Today marks the occasion of what would have been French writer Violette Leduc’s 114th birthday. Leduc, who died of breast cancer in 1972, is perhaps best known for creating a stir among the hard-to-shock French intelligentsia with her impressionistic, sexually Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

A Twitter scammer just stole donations that were meant for Helen DeWitt.

This morning, the brilliant Helen DeWitt, author of The Last Samurai, Lightning Rods, and Some Trick, posted a devastating Twitter thread to which many, many people in America can, unfortunately, probably relate: DeWitt had a medical emergency in December which resulted Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

Surprise: the ALA’s 2020 list of most challenged books shows an uptick in antiracist texts.

The American Library Association has released their annual list of the most challenged books of 2020 (books with the most attempts to censor or ban them). The list is studded with books about societal inequity and discovering your identity—you know, Read more >

By Walker Caplan

Park Chan-wook is directing a TV adaptation of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer.

Exciting adaptation news: A24 and Rhombus Media have optioned the rights to Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer, Nguyen’s Pulitzer-winning debut novel about a half-French, half-Vietnamese army captain who serves as a communist double agent after the fall of Saigon. The Read more >

By Walker Caplan

Here are 6 books Tom Waits should read that aren’t Kerouac or Bukowski.

I’ve always been a fan of Tom Waits. But I was a huge fan of Tom Waits in my late teens and early twenties when his whiskey-soaked romanticism, all burnt-out and busted, was soundtrack to my fantasies of life on Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

Check out the Folio Society's new (and very neon) Philip K. Dick box set.

The Folio Society‘s latest publication is a massive edition of all 118 of Philip K. Dick’s short stories, presented in this shockingly bright four-volume set. Their edition of The Complete Short Stories was designed by independent studio La Boca and Read more >

By Emily Temple

Dostoevsky’s The Idiot helped Nico Walker through his prison sentence.

It’s been a month since the release of Cherry, the big-budget adaptation of Nico Walker’s debut novel-from-life about an Iraq veteran turned heroin addict turned bank robber. Incredibly, Cherry (the book), lauded as a “miracle of literary serendipity” and “epic Read more >

By Walker Caplan