Today, McGill University announced the shortlist for the 2024 Cundill History Prize, honoring books that “speak to major issues in the present day.” The winner, judged on “historical scholarship, originality, literary quality and diverse appeal,” will be announced next month, Read more >
Election season is in full swing, and if your phone is anything like mine, you’re constantly getting robotic, automated text messages from candidates. No matter how many times you reply “stop” or throw your phone across the room, they just Read more >
Beetlejuice was one of the weirder things to happen to 1988, an already weird year. Who but the mad king Tim Burton could have foreseen that throwing Harry Belafonte’s “Banana Boat,” Louise Bourgeois-derivative sculpture, peak Goth Winona, and a roided Read more >
NaNoWriMo, the tongue-twister acronym for National Novel Writing Month, was in the hot seat on social media this weekend for their support of AI writing. The organization facilitates a community of people who sprint to finish a manuscript over the Read more >
There’s mud, there’s blood, there’s a woman being impolite in public: the first trailer for Nightbitch is live. And hungry. Marielle Heller (Can You Ever Forgive Me?), who directs the Annapurna Pictures adaptation of Rachel Yoder’s hit 2021 novel Nightbitch—in which, Read more >
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 >
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