7 great love stories for cynics.
It can be tough to be a cynic on Valentine’s Day. The color palate alone is enough to send some of us into a sugar coma. And don’t get me started on the narratives. So if you’d like to hide Read more >
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News, Notes, Talk
Over 600 writers have signed this open letter to PEN America.
Over 600 writers and poets [3/10/2024 Update: this number now stands at over 1300]—including Roxane Gay, Alissa Nutting, Marie-Helene Bertino, Kiese Laymon, Saeed Jones, Fady Joudah, Carmen Maria Machado, Solmaz Sharif, Tommy Pico, Laura van den Berg, and Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah—have Read more >
By Dan Sheehan
Writers are auctioning signed books to raise money for Gaza's child amputees.
Israel’s relentless assault on Gaza, now in its 125th day, has claimed the lives of over 11,500 Palestinian children and injured tens of thousands more. Save the Children has estimated that, on average, ten Gazan children are losing one or Read more >
By Dan Sheehan
Is the phrase The Tortured Poets Department grammatically correct?
Hello. Lots of folks have asked me if the phrase “The Tortured Poets Department,” which is the title of Taylor Swift’s new album, is grammatically correct. Maybe! It might be grammatically correct, but that depends on how she means the Read more >
By Olivia Rutigliano
Israel has damaged or destroyed at least 13 libraries in Gaza.
Librarians and Archivists with Palestine—a network of information workers in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for self-determination—yesterday released a report detailing the archives, libraries, and museums in Gaza that have been destroyed, damaged, or looted by Israeli armed forces since October Read more >
By Dan Sheehan
Saul Bellow is now a stamp.
Today, the USPS issued the newest stamp in its Literary Arts series, honoring novelist Saul Bellow, recipient of three National Book Awards, a Nobel Prize, and a Pulitzer Prize. Fittingly, the stamp depicts Bellow on a Chicago street, wearing a Read more >
By Emily Temple
Margaret Atwood! Anne Carson! Robot writers! 24 new books out today.
If you, like me, are quietly bemused by the fact that February is already here, I do have one semi-antidote, or, rather, twenty-four: new books to start the new month with. And rest assured, there are some fantastic (and fantastical) Read more >
By Gabrielle Bellot
Taylor Swift has announced a new album, entitled The Tortured Poets Department.
You’ve probably heard by now that last night, during the Grammys ceremony, as she was accepting an award, Taylor Swift announced that she has a new album coming out. Many thought that if she were revealing anything, it would be Read more >
By Olivia Rutigliano
Palestinian-American writer Randa Jarrar was dragged out of a PEN event.
Despite mounting objections from within the American literary community (as well as public condemnation from two prominent novelists who recently cut ties with the organization), on Wednesday evening PEN America’s Los Angeles branch went ahead with its hosting of a conversation Read more >
By Dan Sheehan
Matthew Salesses! V (Eve Ensler!) Doomsday cults! 26 books out in paperback this February.
It’s easy to get overwhelmed by all of the new books coming out each month. And, as a result, it’s easy to miss or put off getting books that came out in hardcover, even the ones that garnered all the Read more >
By Gabrielle Bellot
Two novelists have cut ties with PEN over its Mayim Bialik event and Gaza silence.
Two prominent novelists have broken with PEN America over the organization’s decision to platform controversial actor and outspoken ceasefire opponent Mayim Bialik, as well as its relative silence on the unfolding genocide in Gaza (which so far has claimed the lives Read more >
By Dan Sheehan
Read novelist Lana Bastašić's blazing response to yet another act of literary censorship.
It is my political and human opinion that children should not be slaughtered and that German cultural institutions should know better when it comes to genocide. –Lana Bastašić Last month, the award-winning Bosnian-Serbian novelist Lana Bastašić took the courageous Read more >
By Dan Sheehan
Will Hot Shakespeare be the new Hot Priest?
Get ready to lust over William Shakespeare . . . again. The internet is abuzz with the news that Paul Mescal—who is swiftly becoming our literary adaptation king—will officially be portraying a “roguish young Shakespeare” in Chloé Zhao’s adaptation of Read more >
By Emily Temple
Literary cats! An Ai Weiwei graphic novel! 22 new books out today.
The wheel of this newest of years keeps turning, and that means that the end of January is just about here. It feels astonishing, at least to me, that so much time has passed already. But there can be comfort Read more >
By Gabrielle Bellot
Indie comics powerhouse Fantagraphics has denounced the genocide in Gaza.
Fantagraphics—the Seattle-based indie comics juggernaut and publisher of Daniel Clowes, Charles Burns, and Joe Sacco (whose landmark work of graphic journalism, Palestine, was released by Fantagraphics in 1993)—has issued a forceful statement denouncing the ongoing genocide in Gaza and calling Read more >
By Dan Sheehan
The toddler book tolerability index.
There are hundreds of thousands of kids’ books out there. Some are classics that wind up in everyone’s homes, no matter what. Others are random—given as gifts, found on the playground, purchased in bulk from the resale shop. But which Read more >
