In a 2016 review of Dana Spiotta’s Innocents and Others, the novelist Joshua Cohen boldly declared, “There is no such thing as the Friendship Plot, because while friendship, like marriage, is at least presumably a voluntary estate, it has no Read more >
What a start to September! It’s a new month and new season alike, and to usher it in, you’ll find a veritable cornucopia of new books to consider adding to your lists. Below, you’ll find no less than twenty-seven options Read more >
There have been some grim and abrupt firings at Stanford’s creative writing program recently, threatening to upend the writing institution founded in 1946 by Wallace Stegner. The firings are a blow not just to the individuals who have been reshuffled Read more >
Have you heard the news? Critics and culture writers who miss The People’s Twitter (TM) have been flocking to Substack in search of communal pastures. Jami Attenberg’s popular #1000wordsofsummer project first appeared on the platform, as an offshoot of her Read more >
September is here! It’s still a surprise to me that the fall is here already. But what should come as no surprise is that with a new month before us, there’s a veritable bounty of new books to look forward Read more >
The Kirkus Prize, one of the richest annual literary awards in the world, has announced its list of finalists for 2024. The award is given to three titles that received a starred review from Kirkus on publication. A panel of Read more >
Tina Brown’s The Vanity Fair Diaries is catnip for a certain kind of reader. This gossipy chronicle describes the infamous editor’s rise to power during the mid-80s glory days of Condé Nast. There are Manhattan power lunches and cocktails with Read more >
It’s nearing the end of August, and, with it, the end of summer. It’s a little hard to believe, at least for me; it feels like it all breezed by so quickly. Nevertheless, as we prepare to move from one Read more >
This piece has been updated to include a note from a helpful, Italian-speaking reader. Thanks for writing in! I have been distracted by books before. I’ve missed plenty of subway stops because I’ve been reading, I’ve been left behind at Read more >
Image from The J.D. Salinger Literary Trust, photographed by Vincent Tullo for The New York Times. I hadn’t considered the famously spare J.D. Salinger rainbow cover in a long time, but this post by writer Austin Adams came across my Read more >
If you were putting together a heist crew, how many poets would you include? If you’re Roberto Bolaño, it’s all poets; no getaway drivers, no safecrackers, no wisecracking tech experts. Just poets. The writer and poet Alina Stefanescu shared a Read more >
Today, the Goethe-Institut announced the winner of this year’s Helen & Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize, which every year celebrates “an outstanding literary translation” from German to English. The 2024 recipient is Jon Cho-Polizzi, translator of Max Czollek’s De-Integrate: A Jewish Read more >
Print is dead, long live print. We’re either eulogizing the industry or trying to reboot it. Either way, many in the literary establishment still seem to be obsessed with pages, rustling softly between our fingers. Say what you will about the Read more >
Archaeologists estimate that humans invented writing around 3200 B.C.E. Archaeologists also estimate that soon after, around 3190 B.C.E., humans began wondering if it’s a bad idea to date a writer. “Should I ask out Ninimma? Even though she’s a cuneiform Read more >
I’m happy to report that the internet has been redeemed for another day. I recently came across this very impressive and carefully curated map of bookstores on www.iheartbookstores.com, a simple and very useful site: a searchable, scrollable, and sortable map Read more >
Though the big houses keep a-mergin’, the publishing wheel keeps on turnin’. In this case, that wheel is a romance media company. Romancelandia, meet 831 stories. Erica Cerulo and Claire Mazur are the minds behind the new company, whose title Read more >
It’s another Tuesday in August, and I come bearing tidings of new things to come. Below, you’ll find no less than twenty-seven now books to consider in fiction, poetry, and nonfiction, with a remarkable range of material. There’s new poetry Read more >
It’s been a rough year for the literary festival. Sparked by a campaign from Fossil Free Books (FFB), nine festivals that previously relied on support from the Baillie Gifford Foundation dropped or lost that company’s sponsorship after the firm failed Read more >
Beloved comedy publication The Onion has started back up with a paper-and-ink print edition for the first time in over ten years. As announced on the comedy institution’s website and in a story in The New York Times, The Onion Read more >
The bookstore bar aspires to combine two beloved things: wine and stacks. Though people have been pairing vittles and pages as long as either have existed, the retail trend has taken off in recent years. As Melissa Kravitz Hoeffner reported Read more >
