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News, Notes, Talk

Seth Meyers, "beloved champion of literature," is hosting the 2020 PEN America Literary Awards.

Upon seeing the news that late-night host and SNL alum Seth Meyers will be the MC for this year’s PEN America Literary Awards ceremony, I thought, This seems right. Meyers has a knack for engaging non-traditional late night guests, from Read more >

By Aaron Robertson

Jonathan Franzen was right: cats are terrible (especially for Australia's bushfire tragedy).

I am both a cat apologist and a Jonathan Franzen apologist. This means, in addition to being a lot of fun at parties, I am frequently in a position of trying trying to defend two creatures who have great disdain Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

And the winners of the 69th National Jewish Book Awards are. . .

Today, the Jewish Book Council revealed the winners of the 2019 National Jewish Book Awards, which span 24 categories. Winners include Bari Weiss, whose book How to Fight Anti-Semitism was written in the aftermath of the 2018 attack on a synagogue in Read more >

By Aaron Robertson

Lord Byron used to call William Wordsworth “Turdsworth,” and yes, this is a real historical fact.

Excellent news for this bleak Tuesday, friends: the Romantic poets used to make fun of one another using (what else?) the kind of wordplay that reminds you they were basically all adolescent boys. According to Michael Wood’s recent essay in Read more >

By Olivia Rutigliano

Nnedi Okorafor's Binti is being adapted for Hulu.

Who doesn’t love watching actors float through space? From Interstellar to Guardians of the Galaxy, from Star Trek to Firefly, there’s something very captivating about people flung out of the Earth’s atmosphere. Well, move over, Jean-Luc Picard—there’s a new star Read more >

By Katie Yee

Stephen King would "never" consider diversity when judging movies and he sure wants us to know it.

Good morning, everyone! It’s Tuesday, the Oscars are still racist, and Stephen King has some stuff to say! Apropos of nothing at all—apart from what we can only presume was the crushing sense of responsibility felt by all white men Read more >

By Corinne Segal

10 new books to look out for this week.

Every week, the TBR pile grows a little bit more. It’s getting precarious. It’s taking up your whole nightstand. It’s threatening to crush you in your sleep. Well, what are you waiting for? Get cracking. What are you reading this Read more >

By Katie Yee

Roger Robinson wins the TS Eliot prize for his collection A Portable Paradise.

British-Trinidadian poet Roger Robinson has won the prestigious TS Eliot prize. This is the first time Robinson, “a long-time performer of dub poetry—a form of spoken word with West Indian roots,” has been nominated for the prize, which carries with Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

The most borrowed book of all-time at the New York Public Library is about snow.

The NYPL recently tallied up its all-time check-out numbers and released a top ten list of the most borrowed books in its history. Not surprisingly, there are a lot of children’s books and classics on there, but I wouldn’t have Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

Oscar nominations announced, Academy still LOVES white dudes.

Sooo. People are pissed—rightly so, I think—about the particularly white, particularly male slate of nominations for this year’s Academy Awards.* For example, in a year with movies like Little Women (directed by Greta Gerwig), The Farewell (directed by Lulu Wang), Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

J.D. Vance has launched a VC fund named after a Tolkien artifact and backed by Peter Thiel.

As Bloomberg reports, J. D. Vance, bestselling author of Hillbilly Elegy, Yale graduate, and venture capitalist has teamed up with Peter Thiel, Eric Schmidt, and Marc Andreessen of Silicon Valley to establish a venture capital firm in Ohio called Narya Read more >

By Eleni Theodoropoulos

John le Carré wins $100,000 prize, donates the money to charity.

John le Carré, perhaps history’s greatest spy novelist, was this morning announced as the latest recipient of the $100,000 Olof Palme Prize, an award given for “an outstanding achievement in any of the areas of anti-racism, human rights, international understanding, Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

Jonathan Lethem's first novel, Gun, With Occasional Music, is finally headed to TV.

Today, Deadline announced that a Jonathan Lethem novel is going to be adapted for the small screen—no, not another version of Motherless Brooklyn, but a TV series based on Lethem’s first novel, 1994’s Gun, With Occasional Music. In this one, Read more >

By Aaron Robertson

After months of controversy, the Romance Writers of America's leaders have resigned.

Romance Writers of America president Damon Suede and executive director Carol Ritter announced Thursday that they were resigning following a protracted controversy over the organization’s suspension of a member who called another writer’s work racist. Suede’s resignation is “effective immediately,” Read more >

By Corinne Segal

Here are this year's finalists for The Story Prize.

The three finalists for this year’s Story Prize, which recognizes an outstanding short story collection and comes with a $20,000 award, were chosen from nearly one-hundred submissions. The Prize was established in 2004 by Julie Lindsey and Larry Dark to Read more >

By Aaron Robertson

Dune is getting new life as a three-part graphic novel.

2020 will be a good year for readers (and viewers) who missed adventuring on Frank Herbert’s Arrakis, also known as Dune, the desert planet on which rival oligarchs fight for control of a resource that holds the key to intergalactic Read more >

By Aaron Robertson