Bryan Washington. Photo: David Gracia The finalists for the 2020 PEN America Literary Awards were announced yesterday. Nominees across all nine categories include Anne Boyer’s The Undying, Ben Moser’s Sontag, Bryan Washington’s Lot, Jamil Jan Kochai’s 99 Nights in Logar, and Jia Tolentino’s Trick Mirror, among many others. A full list of finalists can be found here. The winners will be announced at an awards ceremony in March. Jack Fairweather has won this year’s Costa Book of the Year prize for his biography of Polish resistance fighter Witold Pilecki. BuzzFeed editor in chief Ben Smith is leaving the website

Margaret Atwood. Photo: Jean Malek Margaret Atwood is writing a new poetry collection. According to a statement by the publisher, the poems in Dearly will explore “bodies and minds in transition, as well as the everyday objects and rituals that embed us in the present.” The collection will be published by Ecco in November. Former Texas Tribune editor Emily Ramshaw and Tribune chief audience officer Amanda Zamora are starting a women-focused nonprofit news organization. The 19th, named after the amendment that granted white women the right to vote, is backed by Craigslist founder Craig Newmark among other donors. “This

Masha Gessen. Photo: Svenya Generalova According to an article by Maggie Haberman and Michael S. Schmidt, a manuscript of a book by former national security adviser John R. Bolton, given out to associates and to the White House for review, describes a conversation with Trump in August, in which the president said he planned to continue freezing $400 million in aid to Ukraine until the country helped him with investigations into rival Democrats, particularly the Bidens. The book draft also points out that Trump was at odds with Bolton, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Defense Secretary Mark T.

Garth Greenwell. Photo: Bill Adams Reagan Arthur has been named publisher of Knopf, the New York Times reports. Arthur, most recently a senior vice president and publisher at Little, Brown, will succeed Sonny Mehta, who died late last year. PBS NewsHour’s Jim Lehrer has died at age 85. Lehrer was a cofounder of the program and served as its anchor for thirty-six years. On the Maris Review, Maris Kreizman talks to Garth Greenwell about queer life in Bulgaria, the futility of looking for answers in art, and his new book, Cleanness. “The deepest questions of human life don’t have

Mona Simpson. Photo: Gaspar Tringale Mona Simpson has been chosen as the new publisher of the Paris Review. Simpson has previously been a senior editor at the magazine, as well as a professor at Bard College and UCLA. Simpson takes over for Susannah Hunnewell, who died last year. Adam Sternbergh talks to Charles Yu about television writing, imposter syndrome, and his latest book, Interior Chinatown. “Not having an M.F.A., having a day job, there was always a feeling like I came in through the back door, or at least the side door,” he said of his career. “Even to

Isabel Allende. Photo: Lori Barra Literary Hub’s Emily Temple rounds up all the literary events happening in 2020. “It’s only January, so this calendar is necessarily incomplete,” she notes. “I expect we’ll have more than a few surprises in store in this cursed (or blessed?) year of our lord 2020.” On the First Draft podcast, Mitzi Rapkin talks to Isabel Allende about literature, journalism, and her new book, A Long Petal of the Sea. “Few people allow themselves to be influenced or changed by books,” she said. “It takes a book sometimes decades, sometimes centuries, to have an effect,

Jeanine Cummins. Photo: Joe Kennedy The new Yale Review, with Meghan O’Rourke as editor, has launched with a redesigned website. O’Rourke’s first issue features essays, stories, and poetry by authors such as Cathy Park Hong, Sheila Heti, Kevin Young, and Dan Chiasson. In her introductory note, O’Rourke writes, “Every issue, like every piece of good writing, is the product of a series of accidents colliding with intentions. This is an issue that constellates around stories. Collectively, these pieces are testimony to the necessity of imaginative literature as an act of critical interrogation of the world—or the selves—we inhabit.” At

Ronan Farrow At the New Republic Alex Shephard looks at recent deals between Amazon.com and best-selling authors Dean Koontz and Patricia Cornwell. Shephard warns that this may be the beginning of a worrying trend for traditional book publishers, as Amazon bypasses the industry by acquiring, publishing, marketing, and retailing book all on their own terms. With Amazon-controlled companies like Audible, Kindle, and Amazon Prime Video also in the mix, the online giant can make an appealing pitch to lure big-name writers. Shephard argues that book publishers have grown complacent as the industry has been relatively healthy lately, divesting from

Garth Greenwell. Photo: Bill Adams The New York Times will be offering its staff editing training in 2020. The paper celebrated with an oversized custom cake bearing the words “The Year Of Editing,” and tote bags that declare “I edit the New York Times.” The editor in chief of Harper’s Bazaar, Glenda Bailey, is stepping down after nearly nineteen years of leading the magazine. At the Paris Review, an interview with Garth Greenwell about his new novel, Cleanness: “When a situation is so vertiginous, so ethically complex, so emotionally fraught, that I feel like I’m staring into an abyss—that’s

Anna Wiener. Photo: Russell Perkins The New York Times has an excerpt and a review of Zora Neale Hurston’s Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick: Stories from the Harlem Renaissance, a new collection that includes eight stories “recovered” from obscure periodicals and archives. Jabari Asim writes in his review: “Just as Ralph Ellison sought to wring the marvelous from the terrible, Hurston boldly found humor in the midst of tragedy and disruption.” The Atlantic has announced a new fiction section. As executive editor Adrianne LaFrance notes in her introduction to the project, “Contemplative reading might be viewed

Kiley Reid. Photo: David Goddard At Literary Hub, Such a Fun Age author Kiley Reid reflects on literary caregivers. “The literary nanny must be drawn akin to a ghost,” she writes. “The house must feel different in their presence, even if part of their role is to go unseen. They must leave things a bit differently than the family remembers. And a transaction must take place, one that far too often goes beyond a simple exchange of goods, seldom at market price. From teachers to house maids to babysitters to au pairs, the child caregiver is an essential literary

Nell Zink. Photo: Fred Filkorn The National Book Critics Circle has announced the thirty finalists for its 2020 awards. Crime Reads has posted part one of its list of this year’s most anticipated crime novels. “She didn’t seek allies or apologies; as messy as she presented herself to the world, she was clear-eyed about who she was and what she needed,” Kera Bolonick writes in a remembrance of author Elizabeth Wurtzel. “And I loved her, her intensity and loyalty, and the friends and experiences she generously shared with me. Her words and her friendship became life rafts for me

Zadie Smith. Photo: Dominique Nabokov Edwidge Danticat’s Everything Inside, Kali Fajardo-Anstine’s Sabrina Corina, and Zadie Smith’s Grand Union have been selected as finalists for this year’s Story Prize. The winner will be announced later next month. At Literary Hub, Lynne Steger Strong remembers Elizabeth Wurtzel, who died earlier this week at age 52. “Wurtzel made more space for the rest of us to write complicatedly and to get messy, to not apologize for it later, to not continually take it back,” she writes. “I am so grateful to her, for how openly and unapologetically she was.” On The Maris

T Kira Madden. Photo: Jac Martinez Viking has bought It’s Not TV, “the first in-depth history of HBO” by Bloomberg editor Felix Gillette and New York Times TV writer John Koblin. The papers of Power Broker author Robert Caro have been acquired by the New-York Historical Society, the New York Times reports. The acquisition of “200 linear feet of material” has been “a true weight has been lifted from my shoulders,” Caro told the paper. On the Reading Women podcast, Kendra Winchester talks to Sarah Moss about Brexit, the difficulty of writing residencies, and her recent novel, Ghost Wall.

Elizabeth Wurtzel. Photo: David Shankbone Stacey Abrams is writing a book. Our Time is Now: Power, Purpose, and the Fight for a Fair America will be published by Henry Holt in June. “The future of our democracy depends on correcting all that is wrong with our elections process, including the insidious practice of voter suppression,” Abrams said. “And we must remind voters of their power to be seen and to demand action not simply on election days but every day.” The judges for next year’s Booker Prize have been announced. Lee Child, Sameer Rahim, Lemn Sissay, Emily Wilson, and

Anna Wiener. Photo: Russell Perkins Jonathan Coe has won the Costa Prize for his novel, Middle England. “One of the jobs of a novelist is to present humanity, not heroes or villains,” said prize judge John Boyne. “I know Coe is an adamant remainer, but he was very, very good at analysing both sides – and in such a way that it was also a great story.” On Mitzi Rapkin’s First Draft podcast, Jeannie Vanasco discusses her new book, Things We Didn’t Talk About When I Was a Girl. To celebrate the publisher’s fiftieth anniversary, Feminist Press employees share

Merve Emre Boris Kachka, a longtime writer and editor at New York magazine, has been named the new books editor at the Los Angeles Times. Chloe Cooper Jones’s forthcoming memoir, Easy Beauty, was recently purchased by Avid Reader Press in the US, and how has been bought in a pre-emptive bid by Virago Press in the UK. The book, which will be released in 2021, is in part about disability rights, parenthood, and the author’s own experiences with a congenital condition known as sacral agenesis. Says Lauren Wein, editorial director at Avid Reader: “There are so many points of

R. O. Kwon. Photo: Smeeta Mahanti For Electric Literature, R. O. Kwon lists fifty-six books by women and nonbinary writers of color that she’s looking forward to in 2020. Selections include Cathy Park Hong’s Minor Feelings, Leslie Streeter’s Black Widow, and Samantha Irby’s Wow, No Thank You. On the Fiction/Non/Fiction podcast, Whitney Terrell and V. V. Ganeshananthan talk to T. C. Boyle about LSD, hippies, and his most recent novel, Outside Looking In. “The beauty of literature is, the reader supplies the images,” he said of his work. “You give the reader a guide and each person sees it

Elif Shafak. Photo: Zeynel Abidin At the New York Times, Jesse Green looks at how theater is portrayed in movies, books, and television. At The Guardian, Elif Shafak reflects on anger, righteousness, and what is needed to create lasting change. “When progressive-minded people say we must make anger our primary motivation, I flinch a little,” she writes. “While the beginning of anger might feel wonderful, the rest of it is, in fact, quite toxic, repetitive, shallow and backward.” The Intercept’s Mehdi Hasan wonders why Ivanka Trump, a White House senior advisor, is still being treated solely like the president’s

Sonny Mehta. Photo: Leslie Jean-Bart Sonny Mehta, the editor in chief of Knopf and chairman of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, died yesterday. A publishing legend, Mehta worked with a number of authors who went on to win the Nobel Prize: Kazuo Ishiguro, Alice Munro, Orhan Pamuk, Imre Kertész, V. S. Naipaul, and Toni Morrison. Other authors he worked with include: Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, John Banville, Julian Barnes, Anne Carson, Ted Chiang, Michael Crichton, Edwidge Danticat, Katherine Dunn, James Ellroy, Nathan Englander, Richard Flanagan, Yaa Gyasi, Carl Hiaasen, P. D. James, Jhumpa Lahiri, Stieg Larsson,