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Small presses win big at this year's PEN America Literary Awards.

At a ceremony last night, held at The Town Hall in New York City and hosted by Seth Meyers, PEN America announced the winners of its 2020 literary awards. (You can watch the full video here.) Since 1963, the PEN Read more >

By Katie Yee

North Korean writers ordered to produce 70 works of literature about Kim Jong Un's greatness.

The world is on the brink of pandemic, but the North Korean regime—which unsurprisingly claims that the country has seen no cases of COVID-19—is focusing on literature. Kim Yo Jong, who is Kim Jong Un’s sister and “widely considered the Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

10 new books to add to your TBR pile.

Every week, the TBR pile grows a little bit more. It’s getting precarious. It’s taking up your whole nightstand. It’s threatening to crush you in your sleep. Well, what are you waiting for? Get cracking. What are you reading this Read more >

By Katie Yee

Here is the 2020 Women's Prize for Fiction longlist.

Across the pond in foggy London town the longlist for the Women’s Prize for Fiction has just been announced. This year’s list of nominees is particularly star-studded, and includes such luminaries as Edna O’Brien, Jenny Offil, Bernardine Evaristo, Jacqueline Woodson, and Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

AWP conference still on, despite state of disaster in San Antonio due to coronavirus.

In a tweet by executive director Diane Zinna, AWP has announced that despite concerns over the coronavirus—and a recently declared public health emergency in San Antonio—the conference will continue. If you’d been hanging out on literary Twitter for the past Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

Ronan Farrow and Woody Allen now share a publisher.

Here’s an odd and unpleasant piece of news: with today’s announcement that Woody Allen’s long-rumored memoir is no longer just a rumor, and will in fact be hitting shelves next month, Allen and his estranged son Ronan Farrow—who has dedicated much Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

A new site for headline-inspired fiction launches today with stories by Carmen Maria Machado, Colum McCann, and more.

We can’t stop telling stories about pandemics, even as we wait for one to hit us. As coronavirus spreads across the world, so have headlines about the ways that storytellers, from those in Babylonia to contemporary novelists and Hollywood, have Read more >

By Corinne Segal

Ireland has a secret tree carved with famous literary autographs.

It’s true. Nestled inside Coole Park, a nature reserve deep in the heart of the western province of the Emerald Isle, is a giant Copper beach tree inscribed with the names of some of the most famous Irish writers of Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

How Arthur Conan Doyle helped his dying friend finish writing his mystery novel.

On this sunny Friday afternoon, before heading to our weekend writing groups/brunches or whatever, let’s take a moment to think about writer-friends Arthur Conan Doyle and Grant Allen. There are few things more wonderful in this line of work than Read more >

By Olivia Rutigliano

Every book Maeve Wiley references in Sex Education.

People, please don’t misunderstand me: this is not an actual sex education reading list. If you have questions about that stuff, you’re better off looking elsewhere. I cannot help you. This is a brief list born out of my love Read more >

By Katie Yee

This year's PEN World Voices Festival lineup includes Margaret Atwood, Zadie Smith, and more.

PEN America has announced highlights from the lineup for the PEN World Voices Festival 2020: These Truths. The festival will take place May 4-9 across New York City. Margaret Atwood, Roxane Gay and Jia Tolentino will speak with Rebecca Traister Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

Watch this "cinematic interpretation" of your favorite literary meme, #Bookface.

Perhaps you have heard of #BookfaceFriday, or simply #Bookface, a meme particularly loved by librarians, in which, well, you replace your face (or another part of your body) with a book, creating a nifty and literary trompe l’oeil. (If not, Read more >

By Emily Temple

Three new Ojibwe-language books will tell the stories of tribal elders in their own words.

A new project from the Mille Lacs Band and Minnesota Historical Society Press will soon bring the stories of elders to the community with three Ojibwe-language books that speak to the endurance of language and Ojibwe autonomy. To create the Read more >

By Corinne Segal

Remember the time NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch put Klan hoods on Thomas the Train and friends?

And do you remember that it happened on the NRA’s wonderfully, miserably failed TV network? Well, if you don’t remember these two high-points in American culture, you can read about them in the Loesch’s new memoir, Grace Canceled, which seeks Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

The Woman in Black has come to haunt New York City.

The McKittrick Hotel, already the home to the eerie, theatrical somnambulation Sleep No More, has offered one of its many empty, low-lit crannies to host a second production during this bleak mid-winter season: the West End’s long-running hit The Woman Read more >

By Olivia Rutigliano

Elisa Gabbert, author of The Word Pretty, is the new Times poetry columnist.

The New York Times Book Review has announced that their poetry columnist of the last 15 years, David Orr, is stepping down to focus on his own writing, and will be replaced by Elisa Gabbert. Elisa Gabbert’s The Word Pretty (2018) Read more >

By Julia Hass

Wild conspiracy theory books about the coronavirus are proliferating on Amazon.

These days, even the most outlandish conspiracy theories don’t feel like the kind of thing we can easily shrug off. As many writers have noted in the last couple of years, conspiracies often seem to be macabre expressions of our Read more >

By Aaron Robertson

Former Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh is going to prison for a children's book scandal.

Early last year, the city of Baltimore faced an odd political scandal involving then-Mayor Catherine Pugh and her self-published children’s book series about a health-conscious young girl named Healthy Holly. The Baltimore Sun broke the news that while Pugh was a Read more >

By Aaron Robertson

New Yorker critic Dan Chiasson is trying to get Thomas Pynchon to endorse Bernie.

The Democratic primaries may be starting to feel like a slog, but before they’re over, poet and New Yorker poetry critic Dan Chiasson (who was born in Burlington) has one endorsement he’d really like to see: he thinks Thomas Pynchon might Read more >

By Emily Temple

Edwidge Danticat is the first two-time winner of the $20,000 Story Prize.

In 2005, Edwidge Danticat was awarded the inaugural Story Prize for The Dew Breaker, which cuts between Haiti in the 1960s and New York in the present day, following one man with a dark past that explores the ways we Read more >

By Katie Yee