It’s hard not to think about form when writing—to say nothing of starting—an obituary for John Barth. The conventions of the obituary are there to be picked up: appraise the work succinctly (see “kaleidoscopic” above), trace the biography (did you Read more >
Today, the PEN/Faulkner Foundation announced the winner of the 2024 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction: Claire Jiménez’s What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez (Grand Central). What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez was chosen by a panel of judges (Xochitl Gonzalez, Alan Michael Parker, and Lynn Read more >
The Windham-Campbell Prizes has announced this year’s eight winners, each of whom will receive an $175,000 award. This annual prize recognizes excellence in fiction, nonfiction, drama, and poetry written in the English language from anywhere in the world, and is Read more >
If you’ve been to enough book events, you start to recognize some distinct archetypes. See how many you can spot at the next reading or book launch you attend. The Nervous Writer Some authors are confident and poised behind a Read more >
Maryse Condé, the Guadaloupean novelist, playwright, essayist, and “Grande Dame of World Letters” has died. A Booker Prize and New Academy Prize winning author, Condé was an international sensation, and the author of more than twenty books. She was known Read more >
It’s quite a day for new books. If you’ve been on the search for something different, dynamic, daring, devastating, or deviously funny, you’re in luck: I’ve compiled a list of no less than twenty-six options for you to consider. You’ll Read more >
Today Samuel Delany–inventor/expander of several galaxies–turns 82. And I for one would like to throw some birthday love towards this greatest of octogenarians. Known for his high-concept science fiction and his sharp theories on social contact, Delany’s canon spans genres Read more >
We may be in for another hot labor summer in literature and publishing this year. Two recent news items caught my eye, as workers continue organizing in the world of books. Workers at the Oxford University Press Union are threatening Read more >
Plath obsessives, take heed: rare book firm Type Punch Matrix is bringing over two dozen items from the poet’s early life and work—many of them never before shown in public—to this year’s New York International Antiquarian Book Fair. The collection Read more >
If you’ve ever loved a book so much that you wanted to eat it, or driven your loved ones crazy with puns, The Edible Book Festival might be for you. The festival started in 2000 and has expanded into many, Read more >
April, remarkably, is here already—remarkable only, I suppose, because my internal calendar is still stuck on January all too often—and that means that warmer weather and wonderful blooms are also here, both of which I love. (And a solar eclipse Read more >
Did you see the movie Theater Camp (2023) and find yourself involved in high-octane debates about its “realism,” especially as compared to Camp (2003) or Fame (1980)? Have you ever spent a sleepover binge-watching Slings and Arrows, the Canadian televisual Read more >
Depending on which corners of literary social media you frequent, yesterday’s breaking news that SPD (Small Press Distribution) was going under was either an enormous surprise or a predictable tragedy, but the suddenness of the news was a shock to Read more >
As of this morning, Harvard’s Houghton Library has removed a book bound with human skin from its collection. Or rather, the skin has been removed from the book. This is in accordance with the findings of a committee appointed to examine Read more >
You might have seen the Tweet going around earlier this week promising to distill Charles Bukowski’s work into “opportunities to upgrade your mind.” To quote from the viral thread by a “badass creator with over a billion views”: “Charles Bukowski’s Read more >
Writer and translator Nada Hammad originally published the following piece in We Are Not Numbers, a Palestinian youth-led storytelling project based in the Gaza Strip, in 2016. Her testimony from Gaza is a snapshot of the ways her community has Read more >
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