October rolls on, the air slowly chilling, the leaves coolly burning, the transitional nature of October as a month of transformation gradually asserting itself. It is a time when the boundaries between things may seem more porous than ever, a Read more >
We’re well into Halloween’s favorite month — October — when costumed kids, Hot Topic teens, and arts-and-crafts-obsessed adults all join together to celebrate the season of spookiness. If you’ve been feeling a little left out, we’ve got your back. I Read more >
Today, at an event at the Cheltenham Literature Festival, Peter Hoskin announced the shortlist for the 2024 Baillie Gifford Prize for nonfiction, which recognizes the best books in the category published in English in the UK over the past year. Read more >
Today, the American Literary Translators Association announced its shortlists for the 2024 National Translation Awards, which celebrate “literary translators who have made an outstanding contribution to literature in English by masterfully recreating the artistic force of a book of consummate Read more >
The Met Gala is being literary again. On Wednesday, the Metropolitan Museum of Art announced the Costume Institute’s spring 2025 exhibition, which also traditionally serves as the Met Gala theme: “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style.” First of all, according to Vogue, Read more >
Today, the Swedish Academy awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature to Han Kang, “for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.” Han Kang was born in 1970 in South Korea. In Read more >
Image from Desert Island’s fundraiser. Here’s some good news to brighten your Wednesday: after being threatened with eviction, beloved indie comic shop Desert Island raised nearly $90,000 in three days to keep the shop in business. The outpouring of support Read more >
The bookish sister, under-regarded in every film adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, is finally getting a new lease on life. A new BBC adaptation will pay special attention to Mary’s journey. As The AV Club reported, “To commemorate the 30th Read more >
Book bans are far too common these days, and a recent development has added a new and disturbing wrinkle: right-wing censors in Utah have set their sights on Little Free Libraries. Typically these censorship efforts have focused on public libraries Read more >
Last week, the world’s most perfect television show celebrated its 25th anniversary. Under-loved on its initial release, Freaks and Geeks now enjoys one of the smugger lost cause fan clubs. We are legion, us torch-holders for Lindsay and Sam. As Read more >
The 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature will be announced this Thursday, October 10. Who will win? As ever, no one knows. But everyone likes to guess…and bet. And because money talks, the betting odds can tell you a lot. Or Read more >
October is moving briskly along. If it’s all moving a bit too quickly, and you need to slow down for a bit with a brilliant new book, you’re in luck. Below, you’ll find twenty-five exciting, distinctive works out today in Read more >
Novelist and short story writer Robert Coover, a master of metafictional and intricately fabulist and experimental literature, died on Saturday in Warwick, England, “surrounded by family,” according to the AP. He was celebrated (particularly by other writers) for works that Read more >
And it is called, aptly, oh-so-aptly, Whimsigoth. The house at the center of 1998’s Practical Magic may be among the Most Pinterested Fictional Property. A robust mood board movement puts The Owens’ Manse in a whole aesthetic constellation with candelabras, Read more >
Sometimes friends get you in trouble. It’s just going to happen. Even your closest, oldest friends will give you bad advice or indulge a destructive impulse—“Stay out for one more!” “Text him!” “Take extravagant airline upgrades from Turkey!” But if Read more >
Today, McGill University announced the finalists for the 2024 Cundill History Prize, which celebrates books that “speak to major issues in the present day.” Finalists will each receive $10,000; the winner, judged on “historical scholarship, originality, literary quality and diverse Read more >
Yesterday, the MacArthur Foundation announced its class of fellows for 2024. The annually given fellowship “is a $800,000, no-strings-attached award to extraordinarily talented and creative individuals as an investment in their potential.” Colloquially known as “genius grants,” the MacArthur is Read more >
Ah, October: some might say it’s the best month of the year. (It is.) Certainly, it is the spookiest (although Charles Dickens might argue for December) and by the time you read this, I have no doubt that your neighborhood Read more >
Today, the National Book Foundation announced the finalists for the 2024 National Book Awards in all five categories: Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Translated Literature, and Young People’s Literature. The finalists were selected from a starting total of 1,917 books submitted by Read more >
The wheel of the year never stops turning, and October, suddenly, is here. For many of us, the fall can be a time both of harvests and loss, a time of fire and fading, life and death. For many Americans, Read more >
