On the last day of its term, America’s highest court gave legal backing to bigoted attempts to ban books and to erase queer people from public life. In Mahmoud v. Taylor, the Court ruled that Montgomery County in Maryland must Read more >
Big highs and big lows this week. I started the week feeling great after Zohran’s big, exciting win in the NYC mayoral primary, and I’m ending the week feeling awful in the wake of the Supreme Court crushing everything. And Read more >
A mixed bag over here. The Eastern Seaboard was way too hot, but New Yorkers got a blast of fresh air on election day, when the progressive candidate Zohran Mamdani swept the mayoral primary. All of us have neighbors who Read more >
This week, a scrappy San Francisco bookstore announced that they’ll be removing a certain seven book fantasy series set at a dangerous boarding school from their shelves indefinitely. The decision is motivated by the author’s hateful politics. Booksellers at Booksmith, Read more >
The Community of Literary Magazines & Presses (CLMP) has announced the winners for its eleventh annual Firecracker Awards, which celebrate “the best independently published books of fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry and the best literary magazines in the categories of Read more >
July is here! And, amongst other things, that means another month of excellent paperbacks to consider, which I hope will provide a few brief antidotes to the toxicity of the political landscape. Below, you’ll find twenty-five intriguing options in fiction Read more >
The “friends in the city” yarn has a long lineage, spanning every time-bound medium I can think of. Its classic structure follows three to five pals out of a fiercely bonded adolescence into floppier, fractured adult life. Between the covers, Read more >
Fitzcarraldo Editions, Giramondo Publishing, and New Directions are teaming up to launch The Poetry in Translation Prize, a new biennial award for a poetry collection translated into English. The inaugural round of submissions opens on July 15th, and any living Read more >
If you suspect that ChatGPT power users may be getting dumber—looking at you, Cuomo and RFK Jr.—the data seems to indicate that you’re right. A new study by scholars from MIT and Wellesley, titled “Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Read more >
The books world has been full of labor action in the last few years, most recently with Quirk Books voting to form a union with the NewsGuild and Abrams Books winning their vote to form a union with the UAW. Read more >
June is nearing its end, and though I come bearing no good news about the fate of the world—it remains as destructively chaotic as last week, if not more so—I do come bearing some good tidings: that new books are here. Read more >
Happy belated Juneteenth! The destruction of slavery is one of the greatest achievements in our nation’s history, and I hope you took some time to reflect on it yesterday. From my perch in New York City, it’s been a hot Read more >
It was another rough one out there. Lots of bad news, no two ways around it. Sensations sustained us. We got by on the grace of soft old poodle fur, and bright bites. We took heart in rooting for the Read more >
Ursula K. Le Guin Foundation has announced the shortlist for the 2025 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction, which awards $25,000 each year to the author of a book who best represents the legendary writer’s literary, moral, and aesthetic Read more >
Photo from brianwilson.com Beach Boy Brian Wilson, the American genius and big time Norbit fan, passed away last week. He wrote some of the greatest pop songs of all time, and to honor the departed musician, I’ve curated a playlist/reading Read more >
What’s behind a theme park? Often as not, a good yarn. When I was little, my family sometimes found itself at Story Land in New Hampshire. This park—and many others like it around the world—loosely celebrates fairy and folk tales, Read more >
The summer continues on, a summer already marked by corybantic chaos in America and abroad. Sometimes, I must admit, it feels so strange to see the horrors of the world in one moment and think about recommending books in the Read more >
The Orwell Prize for Political Writing and the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction reward books that meet “George Orwell’s own ambition ‘to make political writing into an art.'” This year, the finalists include plenty of heavy-hitters, writing about a wide Read more >
It’s been a long, hot week but the weekend is here. New books came out, some musical greats exited, and Trump and his hogmen continued to wreak havoc. Missed anything? Here are some quick Venns to keep you up to Read more >
Last night at the New York Public Library, Alexander Sammartino won the Young Lions Fiction award for his debut novel Last Acts. This was the 25th year of the Young Lions Award, which comes with a $10,000 prize. Last Acts Read more >
