David Foster Wallace’s 2006 profile of Roger Federer is a canonical piece of sportswriting, and will likely remain so (though maybe with an asterisk) despite Jeremy Gordon’s recent observation in The Outline that DFW seems to have conjured Roger Federer’s Read more >
Graywolf Press is celebrating their 45th anniversary tomorrow with a literary soirée in New York City—congratulations, you guys. If you’re not familiar with this fantastic independent press, or you’d like to get to know it a little better, here are Read more >
Fans have been frustrated with George R. R. Martin’s slow writing pace for years. After publishing the first three novels in his A Song of Ice and Fire series at a steady clip, one book every two years, he began Read more >
Earlier this year, the world lost a little-known light. Rachel Ingalls was the author of many delightfully gut-punching novels. Despite winning the Authors’ Club First Novel in 1970 for her debut Theft (even though it was intended for British writers!), Read more >
Farrar, Straus and Giroux will publish a memoir by Chelsea Manning in winter 2020, the publisher announced today. “Ms. Manning has made headlines around the world, but they couldn’t possibly capture the complexity of her experiences,” Colin Dickerman, FSG’s vice Read more >
The publication of a listicle entitled “The 100 Best Crime Novels and Thrillers Since 1945” in the Sunday Times over the weekend left the Irish crime fiction community justifiably aghast, and author Brian McGilloway succinctly summed up why: Can’t decide Read more >
While taking a quick break from my serious weekend regimen of reading serious books about serious things I happened to accidentally graze my bespoke vellum bookmark across my phone and it opened Twitter (j/k, I only ever read Tweets now). Read more >
Hey, riders of public transit, don’t do this: on Friday, D.C.-based writer Natasha Tynes tweeted a photo of a Metro employee eating with the message, “I thought we were not allowed to eat on the train. This is unacceptable. Hope Read more >
Much ink has been spilled on the problem of diversity and inclusion in corporate publishing, a systemic failing that can be pretty easily traced to money, or the lack of it. It costs a lot to live in New York Read more >
He did! On this very date, in 1849, outside the Astor Place Opera House in New York City, 22 people died after two actors—one American, and one British—clashed over poor reviews, paranoia, and booing. Blame the War of 1812 or Read more >
This morning, I spent some time researching whether Greg Kinnear is actually really Christian or just does those movies for the money (it seems like it’s for the money, though he does hope there’s golf in heaven!). This important research Read more >
In what can only be described as an act of inspired casting, the truly brilliant Kristin Scott Thomas will be joining Lily James and Armie Hammer in Ben Wheatley’s upcoming adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s gothic masterpiece Rebecca—as all-time classic 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. Read more >
Minneapolis-St. Paul is a particularly bookish conurbation, which will now be all the more so with the arrival of Wordplay, “Minnesota’s largest celebration of readers, writers, and great books.” This weekend’s inaugural festival will feature the likes of Stephen King, Read more >
Apparently, when Philip Roth died, he bequeathed his very nice Eames chair to Blake Bailey, his official biographer, also well known for his biographies of John Cheever and Richard Yates. “He practically lived in that chair during his last five Read more >
Today, in Samantha Leach’s profile of Danielle Steel in Glamour, I learned that Danielle Steel has written 179 books. I learned that she has a sign in her office that reads “There are no miracles. There is only discipline.” I Read more >
As a person forced to look at Twitter as part of my job, I have heard a lot about Sally Rooney in the past. . . I want to say, two thousand years? So when her name was trending once Read more >
Tony Schwartz, who ghostwrote The Art of the Deal and helped build President Donald Trump’s false reputation as a savvy businessman, has now spent about three years making it extremely clear that he never wanted any of this. Now, that Read more >
Our office can’t stop laughing at this: writer John Hornor Jacobs tweeted Wednesday morning that a parody cover he designed for The Bell Jar had appeared on a Kindle edition of the book, flagged by Aidan Hanratty (using the Twitter Read more >
It’s Thomas Pynchon’s 82nd birthday! For those of you who maybe got to page 20 of Gravity’s Rainbow and gave up, I am here to help. Thomas Pynchon is terrific but you have to walk through the savannah before wading Read more >
