Colson Whitehead is working on a new novel. Inspired by the real-life story of the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys, The Nickel Boys follows two black teens sent to a reform school in 1960s Florida. “It was emblematic of so many injustices that go on every day that you never hear about,” Whitehead said of the school. “The survivors are never heard from and the guilty are never punished, they live to a ripe old age while their victims are damaged for life. It seemed like a story worth taking up.” The Nickel Boys will be published next summer by Doubleday.
The National Book Foundation announced the finalists for this year’s National Book Award yesterday. Nominees include Sigrid Nunez’s The Friend, Jeffrey C. Stewart’s The New Negro, and Olga Tokarczuk’s Flights. Winners will be announced in November.
A new study finds that heavy Twitter use may be affecting journalists’ judgement of what is newsworthy.
Teen Vogue has hired Lindsay Peoples Wagner as its next editor in chief. Peoples Wagner was most recently fashion editor for The Cut and New York magazine.
“How do we think about the fact that so many boldface names in publishing and literature are female, that feminist reworkings of ancient myths constitute an industry trend, that spiky, honest meditations on motherhood make for another trend—and, still, we live in a world that hates women?” asks Katy Waldman at the New Yorker.