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News, Notes, Talk

Attention: Alyssa Cole is writing a YA fantasy romance graphic novel.

Calling all Alyssa Cole aficionados! The Reluctant Royals author is expanding her expertise to graphic novels. Cole announced on Twitter that she recently signed a six-figure, two-book deal with HarperCollins/Balzer + Bray for Reject Squad, a new graphic novel. The Sleeping Read more >

By Vanessa Willoughby

Gov. Cuomo got a seven-figure advance for his appallingly premature pandemic victory-lap memoir.

Today’s unsurprising-but-still-depressing publishing news: Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who has been accused of sexual harassment by five women, reportedly received “at least low- to mid-seven figures” for his memoir, American Crisis: Leadership Lessons From the COVID-19 Pandemic, which was published by Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

Cover reveal: There's A Revolution Outside, My Love, Tracy K. Smith and John Freeman, eds.

Lit Hub is pleased to reveal the cover of There’s A Revolution Outside, My Love (edited by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Tracy K. Smith and founder of Freeman’s John Freeman), which will be published in May 2021. The cover was designed by Read more >

By Literary Hub

"It's incredibly lazy and depressingly effective." John Oliver on Fox News's Dr. Seuss antics.

If you have somehow missed the ongoing conversation around the recent “cancellation” of Dr. Seuss (read: his own foundation’s decision to let certain books with racist imagery to go out of print), well, bless you. But even if, like me, Read more >

By Emily Temple

Can you sit through all 9 minutes of this Bret Easton Ellis-directed sunglasses ad?

You probably know that Bret Easton Ellis is not only a novelist but a director, but did you know that he once directed a nine (9) minute long ad Persol sunglasses? (And do you hate that that string of words Read more >

By Katie Yee

Here are the best reviewed books of the week.

Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun, Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Committed, Stephen King’s Later, and Isabel Allende’s The Soul of a Woman all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. Brought to you by Book Marks, Lit Hub’s “Rotten Read more >

By Book Marks

Back in 1986, the Castros helped retrieve Hemingway's stolen Nobel Prize.

The period leading up to Ernest Hemingway’s 1954 Nobel Prize win was a pretty nightmarish one for Papa. Debilitating health problems (migraines, high blood pressure, liver disease, diabetes), near-fatal accidents (two plane crashes in as many days while vacationing in Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

Here is your definitive ranking of Bret Easton Ellis film adaptations, from best to worst.

Did you know? Bret Easton Ellis was born this weekend (March 7, to be exact) in 1964. In honor (?) of this highly problematic Pisces, I’ve ranked all the movies that have been adapted from his books. I am aware Read more >

By Vanessa Willoughby

Ray Romano covers Beyoncé in the first Made for Love trailer.

Yes, you read that headline correctly. The first trailer for Made for Love—the upcoming HBO adaptation of Alyssa Nutting’s batshit 2017 novel—has hit the internet, and it is weird in all the most wondrous ways. Chief among them: the dulcet Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

10 writers we’d like to see as politicians.

On this day in 1945, ardent lover of the working class man (and woman, of all classes) Pablo Neruda was elected as a communist senator for the northern Chilean provinces. Neruda, long an admirer of Vladimir Lenin, saw the Soviet Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

Anonymous Content is turning Detransition, Baby into a tv show.

Wonderful news, and not a moment too soon! Deadline reported this morning that Torrey Peters’s novel Detransition, Baby is in development as a half-hour dramedy. It’s being developed by Anonymous Content, the production company behind Being John Malkovich, Spotlight, True Read more >

By Walker Caplan

An audio deepfake of Gucci Mane can now read you classic books.

Weird news of the day: the viral creation collective MSCHF has used machine learning to create an audio deepfake of rapper Gucci Mane reading classic texts. MSCHF collected six hours of audio from podcasts and interviews, transcribed them, and created Read more >

By Walker Caplan

Kazuo Ishiguro thinks artificial intelligence could replace human novelists.

Kazuo Ishiguro’s new novel Klara and the Sun, which follows a robot as she tries to understand the human world, has been praised as “a masterpiece about life, love, and mortality” and “a work that makes us feel afresh the Read more >

By Walker Caplan

A Sylvia Plath fan has petitioned the Church to allow her to be buried near the poet.

Sylvia Plath’s grave has been the subject of fascination for many since her death in 1963; over the last decades, the poet’s tombstone, which sits in a parish graveyard in Heptonstall, has attracted tourists, “feminist vandals,” and thieves alike. Now, Read more >

By Emily Temple

Joy Williams' first novel in 20 years is coming this fall.

While we don’t know what the state of the our pandemic society will be come September, we can at least be sure that we’ll all be getting a little Joy Williams, as a treat. Specifically, a new novel—her fifth, and Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

Two of my favorite writers died this day. Here’s why you should read them.

Two of my favorite writers died on this day, 14 years apart: Georges Perec in 1982 and Marguerite Duras in 1996. I have read the latter in French but not the former, though I suspect it is Perec who warrants Read more >

By Jonny Diamond