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News, Notes, Talk

Walter Mosley will receive the National Book Foundation's lifetime achievement award.

How about some terrific morning literary news to brighten your day? Is that a “yes” I hear? Well, today the National Book Foundation announced that Walter Mosley, author of the highly-regarded Devil in a Blue Dress, will be awarded the Read more >

By Rasheeda Saka

Did you know that "Video Killed the Radio Star" was inspired by a J.G. Ballard story?

As the march of technology continues, it’s easy to forget that artists have been warning of its potential dangers to creativity and pointedly searching for nostalgia for nearly three centuries of industrialization and information advances. None, however, has quite the Read more >

By Molly Odintz

Maggie O'Farrell's Hamnet has won the Women's Prize for Fiction.

The Women’s Prize for Fiction is one of the UK’s most prestigious annual book awards, celebrating artful and inventive literature by women from across the world. It comes with £30,000 and a limited edition bronze statuette called “Bessie” (talk about Read more >

By Rasheeda Saka

Attention nerds and Chalamet stans: the Dune trailer is here, and it's pretty epic.

Dang. The first full trailer for Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s beloved SF saga looks . . . kinda great. (Which is, as we know, not a given when it comes to Dune adaptations!) This is a generous three Read more >

By Emily Temple

Sarah M. Broom wishes she read more W. G. Sebald as a teenager.

Welcome to the Book Marks Questionnaire, where we ask authors questions about the books that have shaped them. This week, we spoke to the National Book Award-winning author of The Yellow House, Sarah M. Broom. * Book Marks: First book Read more >

By Book Marks

Here are the finalists for the 2020 Kirkus Prize.

This morning, Kirkus Reviews announced its 18 finalists for this year’s Kirkus Prize in Fiction, Nonfiction, and Young Readers’ Literature. The finalists were selected by a panel of judges from the pool of titles that received Kirkus Stars in the last Read more >

By Rasheeda Saka

Here's the longlist for this year's Scotiabank Giller Prize.

Today, Ian Williams announced the longlist for this year’s Scotiabank Giller Prize, named in honor of the late literary journalist Doris Giller, which seeks to recognize the best Canadian fiction every year. (Williams, you’ll remember, won last year’s prize for Read more >

By Rasheeda Saka

Viet Thanh Nguyen has just become the first Asian-American member of the Pulitzer Board.

A big congratulations to Viet Thanh Nguyen, who is joining the Pulitzer Prize Board as its first Asian-American and Vietnamese-American member. After an extensive nominating process, the board chooses the winners from a list of finalists in each category and Read more >

By Corinne Segal

Would a TV show in which Shakespeare's characters all live in the same hotel be amazing or terrible?

Today, Deadline announced that Sean Hayes and Todd Milliner, creators of Grimm, are developing another contemporary adaptation of a centuries-old literary standby—and not just any centuries-old literary standby, but um, the entire works of William Shakespeare. The Stratford, now officially in Read more >

By Emily Temple

Revisit the footage of Leo Tolstoy's final years and death.

By the time Leo Tolstoy died, in 1910, at the age of 82, he was one of the most celebrated figures in his country—not only for his writing, but for his outspoken political and philosophical views, his charitable acts, and Read more >

By Emily Temple

Carolyn Reidy will posthumously receive the National Book Foundation’s lifetime achievement award.

Today, the National Book Foundation announced extraordinary news for an extraordinary prize: The late president and chief executive of Simon & Schuster, Carolyn Reidy, will be the recipient of its Literarian Award at the 2020 National Book Awards. The lifetime Read more >

By Rasheeda Saka

20 brand new books to pick up today.

And somehow the long weekend is over! I hope this blog post finds you relaxed, well-rested, and ready to read. This week, we’ve got new books from Sigrid Nunez, Claudia Rankine, Ruth Ware, Ross Gay, Jane Fonda, and much, much Read more >

By Katie Yee

Is Armie Hammer too sensual to play Maxim de Winter?

The first trailer for Rebecca—the forthcoming Netflix adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s 1938 psychological chiller, starring Armie Hammer, Lily James, and Kristen Scott Thomas—has dropped, and it looks…interesting. Rebecca, perhaps the most famous Gothic novel of the last century, is Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

Playwright and novelist Ayad Akhtar will be the next president of PEN America.

Following Jennifer Egan’s three-year term as president of PEN America, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and novelist Ayad Akhtar will take on the role starting in December. Akhtar has received wide recognition writing for the stage. His 2016 play Junk: The Read more >

By Aaron Robertson

Izumi Suzuki, counterculture icon and SF legend, will finally be published in English in 2021.

Izumi Suzuki, whose works of science fiction have earned her a special place in Japanese counterculture, will soon make her English-language debut with a story collection whose synopsis sounds almost unbearably cool. Verso Books will publish Terminal Boredom, a short Read more >

By Corinne Segal

Good news Fridays: Area woman drives awesome book bus for the love of it.

I love old Volkswagen vans and I love bookstores and because it’s Friday I also love feel good stories (I also love hardworking local newspaper headlines, but that’s another story). So that’s why I’m bringing your attention to the story Read more >

By Jonny Diamond