On March 9, 1997, Christopher Wallace—aka Biggie Smalls, The Notorious B.I.G., a man who still holds a claim on the title of greatest rapper of all-time—was shot and killed on the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and South Fairfax Avenue, in Read more >
Apart from the fact of trying to figure out if Chelsea Girls is a novel or a memoir or a collection of stories (or whether it’s really even a book at all) I think I mainly want to tell you Read more >
For all the good that it’s done, the New York Times sometimes makes decisions that stoke the anger or disappointment of its readers. The announcement on Monday that the Times‘s international edition will no longer publish daily political cartoons, thus cutting ties with Read more >
Emily Ruskovich has won the 2019 International Dublin Literary Award (formerly known as the IMPAC) for her novel Idaho. The award comes with €100,000, making it world’s largest prize for a single novel published in English. The books on the longlist Read more >
Journalist David Neiwert said Tuesday that Twitter has suspended his account for displaying a cover image from his book Alt-America: The Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump, which Verso Books published in 2017. Here’s the image: Read more >
Today, Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington released the first photo from the set of Little Fires Everywhere, their adaptation of Celeste Ng’s 2017 bestselling novel, which will premiere on Hulu in 2020—and I have to say that the looks are Read more >
Every week, a new crop of great new books hit the shelves. If we could read them all, we would, but since time is finite and so is the human capacity for page-turning, here are a few of the ones Read more >
Natasha Tynes, whose book distribution deal was canceled after she posted, then quickly deleted, a tweet shaming a black D.C. metro employee for eating on the train, is suing her publisher for $13 million. The complaint states that Rare Bird Read more >
To coincide with World Oceans Day, XPRIZE—which is a nonprofit organization that manages competitions to encourage technological innovation and “radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity”—has published Current Futures: A Sci-Fi Ocean Anthology online. The anthology collects the work of 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 >
You may think we’ve reached Atwood market-saturation, but turns out Atwood market-saturation just doesn’t exist. Today, Variety reported that the rights to Margaret Atwood’s brilliant 1969 debut novel, The Edible Woman, have been picked up by Entertainment One. The adaptation will Read more >
The Community of Literary Magazines and Presses is an essential nonprofit that tirelessly supports independent literary publishers. Last night at Poets House in New York City, CLMP announced the winners of the fifth annual Firecracker Awards, dedicated to honoring the Read more >
To mark the 75th anniversary of of the Normandy landings, renowned British WWII historian James Holland (author of the forthcoming Normandy ’44: D-Day and the Epic 77-Day Battle for France) has compiled a list of the five best books about Read more >
Beloved Scots saloniste* and writer Damian Barr (most recently of the novel You Will Be Safe Here) is taking his wildly successful Literary Salon series—which is both a podcast and a live event at London’s posh Savoy Hotel—to the little Read more >
Having already been welcomed with acclaim from seemingly every corner of the literary world, Ocean Vuong’s novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous was officially released on Tuesday as a crowd gathered at Brooklyn’s Books Are Magic to hear him speak. Vuong talked Read more >
Disoriental, Négar Djavadi’s novel that explores the epic journey of a family over three generations between Teheran and Paris; was named winner of the Albertine Prize 2019, co-presented by the Cultural Services of the French Embassy and Van Cleef & Read more >
I’ll say this for Bill De Blasio mayor of New York City and the most confusing 2020 presidential candidate: his heart was in the right place when he tweeted that Joe Biden’s support of the Hyde Amendment, which would ban Read more >
At a ceremony in central London earlier today, Tayari Jones (who beat out Pat Barker, Madeline Miller, Diana Evans, Oyinkan Braithwaite, Anna Burns) was presented with the £30,000 award (and a limited edition bronze figure, the “Bessie”) for her novel, Read more >
My favorite feature at The Strategist is the one where they ask celebrities what things they can’t live without, mostly because a) I’m nosy, and b) I’m always ready to go down an online shopping rabbit hole. Today, the celebrity in Read more >
Rob Spillman can admit it: it was his crazy idea. Spillman, one of the founders of story exchange organization Narrative 4, wanted to launch a literary road trip to bring books to communities around the country. “I was going to Read more >
