The finalists for the 2018 Kirkus Prize have been announced. Nominees include Naima Coster’s Halsey Street, Lauren Groff’s Florida, Ling Ma’s Severance, Beth Macy’s Dopesick, and Kiese Laymon’s Heavy. The winner will be announced in October.
Ben Fountain talks to Rolling Stone about the 2016 election, moving from fiction to journalism, and his new book, Beautiful Country Burn Again.
Over one hundred contributors to the New York Review of Books, including Luc Sante, Janet Malcolm, and Colm Tóibín,have signed an open letter criticizing the magazine’s termination of editor Ian Buruma.
“The project that Me Too has advanced is a visionary assertion that injustices can be righted, that men and women can interact with more integrity and more compassion than we have so far,” writes Moira Donegan at The Guardian about recent articles at NYRB and Harper’s Magazine. “MacArthur and Buruma have refused this project, denying that the world might be otherwise than they have always known it, asserting that their perceptions are the only correct ones. Those who are too defensive, too incurious, or too bigoted to engage honestly with Me Too are missing out on one of the greatest intellectual feats of our time.”
Tonight at MurMrr—the excellent Brooklyn series of performances by authors and musicians—Karl Ove Knausgaard will discuss his epic My Struggle with Maggie Nelson, author of The Argonauts.