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News, Notes, Talk

Michael Fassbender to adapt Kevin Barry's Night Boat to Tangier.

Good news, lovers of brooding Irish actors and tragicomic literary noir: Michael Fassbender—the Academy Award-nominated Hiberno-German star of Inglourious Basterds, Shame, and the latest incarnation of the X-Men movies—has optioned the film rights to Night Boat to Tangier, Irish author Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

Haruki Murakami celebrated 40 years of being a novelist with a rare public reading of his next book.

Haruki Murakami ended a nearly 25-year streak of avoiding public readings today, when he held an event to mark four decades since his authorial debut. He appeared with novelist Mieko Kawakami, who won the Akutagawa Prize in 2008 and interviewed Read more >

By Corinne Segal

Crazy Rich Asians's Jon M. Chu is adapting Mary H.K. Choi's Permanent Record.

First he brought us Step Up 2: The Streets. Then he brought us Step Up 3D. (Where he was for the original Step Up, I couldn’t tell you.) But then, most notably, he directed blockbuster rom-com Crazy Rich Asians in 2018. Now Read more >

By Katie Yee

Of course Emma Watson is hiding copies of Little Women around London.

It’s raining today in London, but those still determined to visit its feminist landmarks may be rewarded with a soggy copy of Little Women, courtesy of Emma Watson’s latest book-hiding stint. After striking the New York subway and London Underground in Read more >

By Corinne Segal

ICYMI: Waterstones has the hottest gift-wrapping tip of the season.

‘Tis the season of realizing the limits of your spacial awareness! “Measure twice, cut once”? In this economy? Luckily, UK bookseller Waterstones has opened our eyes to a new way of rectifying our (easily preventable) gift-wrapping fuck-ups. Behold: This is Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

George R.R. Martin opens bookstore next to his movie theater in Santa Fe.

Did you know that master fantasist George R.R. Martin opened his own movie theater in Santa Fe, the Jean Cocteau Cinema? Well, now he’s opening a bookstore next door, Beastly Books. As Martin writes, on his blog: We’ve been doing Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

America 2019: Area man steals rare books in order to pay for cancer treatment.

File under how we live now: a Mesa, Arizona man allegedly stole over $16,000 worth of rare books from an associate’s private collection. Over the course of a year, 60-year-old Jeffrey William Grande took and resold titles like Time Machine Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

The employees at iconic NYC bookstore McNally Jackson have voted to unionize.

Earlier today, the employees of the New York City-based indie bookshop McNally Jackson voted to join the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union (RWDSU). RWDSU President Stuart Appelbaum says, “We’re proud to welcome the workers of McNally Jackson into our Read more >

By Katie Yee

Watch the first tantalizing trailer for Little Fires Everywhere.

That’s right, Celeste Ng fans: a trailer for Little Fires Everywhere, the star-studded Hulu adaptation of Ng’s wildly-successful 2017 novel—about the intertwined fates of the picture-perfect Richardson family and the enigmatic mother and daughter who upend their lives when they move to Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

Esmé Weijun Wang, Danielle Evans, and Aaliyah: the week's most exciting book deals.

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 >

By Emily Temple

Here are PEN America's 2020 literary awards longlists.

PEN America has just announced its literary longlists for 2020. The awards will confer over $330,000 in total to writers and translators whose exceptional literary works were published in 2019. The categories span fiction, nonfiction, poetry, biography, essay, science writing, Read more >

By Eleni Theodoropoulos

Susan Choi's Trust Exercise is coming to your television.

Congrats to Susan Choi for ending the year on a high note: her novel Trust Exercise, which won this year’s National Book Award for Fiction, is in development to become a limited television series with FilmNation Entertainment. Choi will write Read more >

By Corinne Segal

Kosovo declares Peter Handke "persona non grata" as Nobel controversy continues.

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 >

By Corinne Segal

Announcing the winners of the 2019 Brittle Paper Awards.

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 >

By Aaron Robertson

Book-shaped objects are the new books: 25 great gifts for people who love books but not reading.

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 >

By Emily Temple

How does the Nobel Prize affect book sales? (And what if there's controversy?)

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 >

By Aaron Robertson

Baz Luhrmann is adapting The Master and Margarita for the big screen.

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 >

By Emily Temple

De’Shawn Charles Winslow wins 2019 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize.

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 >

By Dan Sheehan

Here's how to livestream Margaret Atwood's birthday party.

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 >

By Jessie Gaynor

It's a Chrismukkah miracle: The Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is finally getting adapted.

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 >

By Corinne Segal