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News, Notes, Talk

Every book Maeve Wiley references in Sex Education.

People, please don’t misunderstand me: this is not an actual sex education reading list. If you have questions about that stuff, you’re better off looking elsewhere. I cannot help you. This is a brief list born out of my love Read more >

By Katie Yee

This year's PEN World Voices Festival lineup includes Margaret Atwood, Zadie Smith, and more.

PEN America has announced highlights from the lineup for the PEN World Voices Festival 2020: These Truths. The festival will take place May 4-9 across New York City. Margaret Atwood, Roxane Gay and Jia Tolentino will speak with Rebecca Traister Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

Watch this "cinematic interpretation" of your favorite literary meme, #Bookface.

Perhaps you have heard of #BookfaceFriday, or simply #Bookface, a meme particularly loved by librarians, in which, well, you replace your face (or another part of your body) with a book, creating a nifty and literary trompe l’oeil. (If not, Read more >

By Emily Temple

Three new Ojibwe-language books will tell the stories of tribal elders in their own words.

A new project from the Mille Lacs Band and Minnesota Historical Society Press will soon bring the stories of elders to the community with three Ojibwe-language books that speak to the endurance of language and Ojibwe autonomy. To create the Read more >

By Corinne Segal

Remember the time NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch put Klan hoods on Thomas the Train and friends?

And do you remember that it happened on the NRA’s wonderfully, miserably failed TV network? Well, if you don’t remember these two high-points in American culture, you can read about them in the Loesch’s new memoir, Grace Canceled, which seeks Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

The Woman in Black has come to haunt New York City.

The McKittrick Hotel, already the home to the eerie, theatrical somnambulation Sleep No More, has offered one of its many empty, low-lit crannies to host a second production during this bleak mid-winter season: the West End’s long-running hit The Woman Read more >

By Olivia Rutigliano

Elisa Gabbert, author of The Word Pretty, is the new Times poetry columnist.

The New York Times Book Review has announced that their poetry columnist of the last 15 years, David Orr, is stepping down to focus on his own writing, and will be replaced by Elisa Gabbert. Elisa Gabbert’s The Word Pretty (2018) Read more >

By Julia Hass

Wild conspiracy theory books about the coronavirus are proliferating on Amazon.

These days, even the most outlandish conspiracy theories don’t feel like the kind of thing we can easily shrug off. As many writers have noted in the last couple of years, conspiracies often seem to be macabre expressions of our Read more >

By Aaron Robertson

Former Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh is going to prison for a children's book scandal.

Early last year, the city of Baltimore faced an odd political scandal involving then-Mayor Catherine Pugh and her self-published children’s book series about a health-conscious young girl named Healthy Holly. The Baltimore Sun broke the news that while Pugh was a Read more >

By Aaron Robertson

New Yorker critic Dan Chiasson is trying to get Thomas Pynchon to endorse Bernie.

The Democratic primaries may be starting to feel like a slog, but before they’re over, poet and New Yorker poetry critic Dan Chiasson (who was born in Burlington) has one endorsement he’d really like to see: he thinks Thomas Pynchon might Read more >

By Emily Temple

Edwidge Danticat is the first two-time winner of the $20,000 Story Prize.

In 2005, Edwidge Danticat was awarded the inaugural Story Prize for The Dew Breaker, which cuts between Haiti in the 1960s and New York in the present day, following one man with a dark past that explores the ways we Read more >

By Katie Yee

I don't know who needs to hear this, but please stop going into bookstores and kicking the books.

Yesterday, Business Insider published a list of 10 things you should never do in bookstores (according to booksellers). Some of 10 warn you against low-grade jerk behavior (like: don’t photograph staff recommendations and then buy those books somewhere else, and don’t hide Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

Here is the 2020 International Booker Prize longlist (with good news for indie presses).

The longlist for this year’s International Booker Prize is out, and small presses already have reasons to celebrate: nine of the titles that made the cut come from independent publishers. The book, given every year to a book that’s published Read more >

By Corinne Segal

Bestselling author and real-life Hemingway hero Clive Cussler has died.

Clive Cussler, the author of more than 85 books, written over 4 decades, died at home on Monday, February 24, at the age of 88. Cussler was a major bestseller in his lifetime, selling over 100 million copies of his Read more >

By Emily Temple

Meet AROUND B, the book bot butler.

Maybe I would hate it if it weren’t so cute. I’m talking about AROUND B, a little book bot butler created by Kim Seungwoo and Kyumin Ha of Naver Labs. What is a book bot butler? Glad you asked. The idea Read more >

By Aaron Robertson

Will the new adaptation of A Tale of Two Cities still have Big Dickens Energy?

His Dark Materials writer Jack Thorne is set to bring some of that evergreen Big Dickens Energy to the small screen in the form of an upcoming series adaptation of A Tale of Two Cities. Thorne will write and executive produce Read more >

By Dan Sheehan