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News, Notes, Talk

Win an organic farm in upstate New York by... writing an essay?

Calling the highly specific group of writers who have $150 to burn and would like to care for an organic farm in upstate New York: there’s a contest just for you! Here are some things about it: –It’s the most Read more >

By Corinne Segal

10 celebrities with unusual voices reading classic children's books.

Rainn Wilson—the endearingly oddball funnyman whose film and TV credits include The Office, The Rocker, The Meg, and dozens of other things I haven’t actually seen but would probably watch on a plane—is narrating a new audiobook of Norton Juster’s classic children’s Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

Good for publishing, bad for our souls: Michael Wolff has written a sequel to Fire and Fury.

In January of 2018, Michael Wolff’s Trump exposé Fire and Fury was published to major uproar—and massive sales. So, like any good creator of a blockbuster hit, he set about to write a sequel. Today, Axios reported that Siege: Trump Under Fire, Read more >

By Emily Temple

Hungover and happy at Minnesota's new book festival, Wordplay.

There are inherent risks in asking a debut novelist to recap his experience at a new literary festival taking place in his hometown. First, he might be exhausted and hungover. (Fact check: he is.) Second, as a former Minnesotan and Read more >

By Ryan Chapman

Taffy Brodesser-Akner writing about The Rules is a gift we don't deserve.

It’s always a good day when a new Taffy Brodesser-Akner enters the world. I will read anything Brodesser-Akner—master profiler and debut novelist(!)—writes, but her piece in the New York Times today, “Stuff Your ‘Rules,” is especially My Jam. I love Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

Angela Davis at Princeton on the one-year anniversary Marielle Franco’s assassination.

On March 14th and 15th, Princeton University’s Brazil LAB opened its doors to academics and activists from Brazil and the United States for the symposium “Black Feminisms Across the Americas: A Tribute to Political Activist Marielle Franco.” Over 300 people Read more >

By pedromeiramonteiro

Doris Day revealed a darker side in her 1975 autobiography.

Doris Day, the actress, singer and animal rights activist (who didn’t need an Oscar to ensure her greatness) died Sunday at 97. Day was one of the last larger-than-life links to the “Golden Age” of Hollywood filmmaking, perhaps best known Read more >

By Aaron Robertson

Tayari Jones's Silver Sparrow has been optioned by Issa Rae!

According to Publishers Marketplace, Issa Rae has optioned Tayari Jones’s 2011 novel Silver Sparrow, which is “about the young daughter of a bigamist who, flouting the unwritten rule against making contact with her half-sister, decides to befriend her, setting into motion Read more >

By Emily Temple

New Books Tuesday: Your weekly guide to what’s publishing today, fiction and nonfiction.

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 >

By Emily Temple

Did David Foster Wallace kind of make-up Roger Federer’s “Matrix-like” shot vs. Andre Agassi?

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 >

By Jonny Diamond

Here's where to start with the epic Graywolf Press backlist

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 >

By Emily Temple

George R. R. Martin has written the end of Game of Thrones—he's just keeping it from you.

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 >

By Emily Temple

Rachel Ingalls was a gem, and we're thinking of her on her birthday.

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 >

By Katie Yee

FSG will publish Chelsea Manning's memoir

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 >

By Corinne Segal

The Sunday Times snubs 75 years of Irish crime fiction

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 >

By Dan Sheehan

Why was Shel Silverstein trending on Twitter all weekend? (Sex, the answer is sex.)

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 >

By Jonny Diamond

Author's book is in trouble after she publicly shamed a Metro employee.

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 >

By Corinne Segal

Dear all of publishing, here's what your internships should look like.

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 >

By Jonny Diamond

Did you know that Shakespeare once caused a deadly riot in NYC?

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 >

By Emily Firetog

Is there a Chicken Soup book for every soul in the universe?

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 >

By Jessie Gaynor