It’s another week in a year that feels, already, like multiple years have passed, a year of head-scratching and head-spinning tumult. In times like this, it can be worthwhile—self-salvific, even—to take a break from all the news, to pause your Read more >
Though it’s by no means the worst of our worries at this moment, the evil empire has made its first moves on the culture. As Laura Grimes of Oregon ArtsWatch reported last Thursday, the Trump administration canceled a National Endowment Read more >
Photograph by Quique Kierszenbaum/The Guardian Israel’s genocidal aggression against Palestinians continues despite a ceasefire in Gaza, as police stormed two locations of the Palestinian-owned Educational Bookshop locations in occupied Jerusalem last night, and arrested two of the owners, Mahmoud Muna and Read more >
In the immortal words of Blink 182, “Work sucks, I know.” It always has. But it’s only recently that we in the mainstream have begun to state this truth as plainly as Tom DeLonge. Why should that be? For one Read more >
Beloved (and bestselling) novelist Tom Robbins—arguably most famous for his 1976 novel Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, adapted into a film by Gus Van Sant, and 1980’s Still Life with Woodpecker—died on Sunday at the age of 92. Robbins was Read more >
This week marks the anniversary of the first issue of Reader’s Digest—for the unacquainted, there’s a great overview of the history of the magazine in this week’s Literary History newsletter. I got curious and decided to reread this first issue, Read more >
This week, the 43rd John Dos Passos Prize was awarded to novelist and editor Angie Cruz (How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water; Dominicana; Let it Rain Coffee) by Longwood University. The Dos Passos Prize is the oldest Read more >
In her new book, Book and Dagger: How Scholars and Librarians Became the Unlikely Spies of World War II, scholar Elyse Graham explores the secret history of U.S. intelligence and lays out yet another reason why you should thank a Read more >
This week, 404 Media, which is publishing some really essential writing these days and is well worth your support, featured an excellent piece on the problem librarians are facing as their ebook collections start to fill up with AI slop. Read more >
Photo by AP Photo/Brynn Anderson via The Buffalo News Groundhog Day was over the weekend, an event I haven’t paid much attention to since I was a kid. But an odd detail from a news story — the existence of Read more >
If you—or, let’s face it, one of your retired family members—are looking for a historical side hustle, there’s a team in Washington who want to see you. A team of Top Men. The National Archives is seeking volunteers to help transcribe Read more >
This week, the book-reading internet was apparently in a mild uproar over six redesigns of Jane Austen novels, which will be published—with new introductions from popular contemporary YA romance novelists like Ali Hazelwood and Tessa Bailey—by Puffin, Penguin UK’s children’s Read more >
Well, all you have to do is bid big. Some of the late poet’s possessions are coming to auction later this February, via Julien’s LA-based auction house to the stars. The treasures on offer mostly come from the collections of Read more >
It’s the beginning of a new month in a year that has already felt interminably long, and, for many of us, lugubrious. But amidst the chaos and devastation, there are still things to look forwards to, still things to bring Read more >
Image from the Library of Congress. Simon & Schuster publisher Sean Manning recently published a “gripping,” “spelling-binding,” “tour de force” of an essay for Publishers Weekly about blurbs, those little reviews we’re all obsessed with. Manning’s essay lays out the Read more >
After fifteen months of protests, boycotts, and pressure campaigns (from Can Lit Responds, No Arms in the Arts, and other activist groups within the Canadian literary community), the Giller Prize—Canada’s most prestigious and lucrative literary award—has ended its decades-long partnership Read more >
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