Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi, Ayad Akhtar’s Homeland Elegies, Walter Mosley’s The Awkward Black Man, and Ben Macintyre’s Agent Sonya all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. Fiction 1. Piranesi by Susanna Clarke 14 Rave • 5 Positive Read more >
Last but certainly not least: it’s the time for fiction! The National Book Foundation has announced the ten books contending for this year’s National Book Award for Fiction. The award, created in 1950, is the most prestigious literary prize in the Read more >
“Why do I speak to you from exile? Because a Negro community in the South took up guns in self-defense against racist violence—and used them.” These are the opening lines of Robert F. Williams’ book Negroes With Guns (1962), the work Read more >
Today, the New York Public Library announced the winner for this year’s Young Lions Fiction Award. The award—founded in 2001 by Ethan Hawke, Hannah McFarland, Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, and Rick Moody—was created to honor a writer age 35 or younger Read more >
Today, the National Book Foundation announced the longlist for the 2020 National Book Award for Nonfiction. The National Book Awards, created in 1950, is the most prestigious literary prize in the United States, rewarding quality and cogent writing. This year’s Read more >
Australia has spoken, and J.K. Rowling is out. Rabble Books & Games in Maylands, Australia, said earlier this week that the store would stop stocking her books due to this, this, or this, all of which, it’s not so wild Read more >
There are very few celebrities whose meals interest me. (Yes, I do hate Instagram, thank you.) But here’s one: Stanley Tucci, who announced today that he’s working on a memoir called Taste: My Life Through Food. Publisher Gallery Books described Read more >
Stanley Crouch, jazz critic, playwright, novelist, public intellectual, celebrated—and controversial—essayist, and MacArthur Genius Grant recipient, died on Wednesday at the age of 74. “Mr. Crouch defied easy categorization,” wrote Sam Roberts in The New York Times. A former Black nationalist Read more >
We’ve known for a while that Barack Obama would be coming out with a new memoir. Today his publisher confirmed that the book, A Promised Land, will be released soon after the November elections. The former president isn’t a stranger to Read more >
And now, it’s the time for the poets! Today, the National Book Foundation announced the longlist for the 2020 National Book Award for Poetry. The National Book Awards, created in 1950, is the most prestigious literary prize in the United Read more >
Why yes, it’s the RPG of your dreams: You are seminal American modernist poet WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS. It is late at night and you are HUNGRY. Investigate the KITCHEN for something to EAT. Play it all out here. (You won’t Read more >
Lil Nas X has been riding off the success of last year’s single “Old Town Road” for a while now (a fact he commonly makes fun of himself). There was a time last summer when it felt like a new Read more >
Here’s a moment of good news for your midweek slump: Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney is back. Several years after making her debut with The Nest—a novel that earned a seven-figure advance from Ecco and inspired a movie project, currently under development Read more >
In more literary news, the National Book Foundation has just announced the longlist for the 2020 National Book Award for Translated Literature. The longlist includes ten novels originally published in eight different languages: Arabic, German, Spanish, Persian, Tamil, Korean, Japanese, Read more >
Stephen King’s It, the novel that birthed a million Coulrophobics (and, hopefully, far fewer underage sewer orgies), celebrates its 34th publication anniversary this week. King’s 1100-page opus of childhood horror—in which seven children in a small Maine town are terrorized by Read more >
The murderous unicorns are coming! A 28-year-old lawyer and debut children’s book author from England, Annabel Steadman, has landed what is reportedly the largest children’s book deal ever—a healthy seven figures—for a fantasy adventure series, Skandar and the Unicorn Thief. The Read more >
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