Peter Handke, the Austrian writer whose Nobel win has been causing upheaval in the literary world since it was announced in October, is now persona non grata in Kosovo, the country’s foreign minister Behgjet Pacolli announced Wednesday. Handke, who has Read more >
Brittle Paper, an online magazine that publishes English-language writing by authors of African descent, announced the five winners of the 2019 Brittle Paper Awards on Wednesday. Brittle Paper, now in its ninth year, was created to “archive the wealth of Read more >
Everyone has that one friend who identifies as a “book lover” or a “book person” or simply “bookish.” Well, okay, one might think, but which books do they love? All books? It can’t be. (And yet.) So when the holidays Read more >
In the publishing world, it seems like winning the Nobel Prize just isn’t what it used to be. A Deutsche Welle interview with Lucien Leitess, director of the Swiss publishing house Unionsverlag, explored the business of predicting a Nobel laureate’s Read more >
Almost three years ago, we reported that Mikhail Bulgakov’s masterpiece The Master and Margarita (a book we might love slightly too much) was being developed into a feature film by Svetlana Migunova-Dali and Grace Loh. Now Deadline reports that Baz Read more >
Huge congratulations to De’Shawn Charles Winslow, who last night took home the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize for his acclaimed debut In West Mills. Winslow was presented with the prestigious prize—which has in previous years been awarded to Junot Read more >
Margaret Atwood is having an 80th birthday celebration tonight, and you’re invited (to watch the festivities via a livestream)! The New York Public Library is hosting the celebration of Atwood’s life and work, featuring readings from Claire Danes, Ann Dowd, Read more >
Attention comic book nerds, Pulitzer Prize committee members, and all enthusiasts of historical and/or fantastical fiction: at long last, Michael Chabon’s magnum opus, the Pulitzer Prize winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, is finally being adapted—not as a Read more >
The 15th Annual Mission Creek Festival, an indie music and lit mainstay, will be held in Iowa City on April 1-4, 2020. The great thing about Mission Creek is the way it aspires to turn music lovers onto new lit, Read more >
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. FICTION Perumal Murugan, tr. N. Read more >
Validating many of us who have fought this fight in comment sections, newsrooms, and DMs for years (years!!!!), Merriam-Webster announced today that the pronoun “they” is its word of the year. Searches for “they” rose by 313 percent in 2019; Read more >
In case you missed it, Boris Johnson wrote a novel called Seventy Two Virgins and it’s even worse than you might think: “Hooked nose” Kosovar Muslims, Jews who control the media, “half-caste” characters, a “Chinaman,” hunter-gatherer African immigrants, and all Read more >
AbeBooks has published a list of the most expensive books they sold this year, with The Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln, which sold for $40,000, at the top. Better luck next year, signed Harry Potter deluxe set ($38,560)! A first Read more >
Sure, in America we live in an autocratic dystopia where powerful college professors can just go around tweeting mean things at helpless New York Times op-ed columnists, but things are also bad in China. According to the Washington Post, “Library Read more >
I worry about kids and screens, just as I worry about grown-ups and screens, just as I worry about Boomers and Facebook. So I am fully behind the heartwarming story of Denise Bowers, a pre-kindergarten teacher from Bluffton, South Carolina, Read more >
As you no doubt know, Olga Tokarczuk was recently awarded the Nobel Prize in literature, “for a narrative imagination that with encyclopedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life.” Over the weekend, the Nobel Prize committee Read more >
Something to look forward to in 2020: the Pulitzer Prize Board has announced a new experimental category, Audio Reporting. “The renaissance of audio journalism in recent years has given rise to an extraordinary array of non-fiction storytelling,” says Pulitzer Administrator Read more >
Today saw two new developments in the ongoing Peter Handke controversy, which has set the literary world ablaze since October 10 when the Swedish Academy announced the Austrian writer/Slobodan Miloševic eulogist as the joint winner (with Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk) of Read more >
The National Books Critics Circle has just announced the seven finalists for the 2019 John Leonard Prize for Best First Book published in the last year. The winner will be announced on January 11th, 2020, but in the meantime, peruse Read more >
My personal form of astrology is to anxiously trawl Publishers Marketplace every week. No, wait, hear me out: it’s how I can tell the only future that matters: which books I will be reading a year and a half from now. Also, Read more >
