Toni Morrison. Photo: John Mathew Smith Toni Morrison died last night in Manhattan. She was 88. The author of eleven novels and a number of essay collections, Morrison was also the first black woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature and the first black woman to work as an editor at Random House. At The Millions, S. Kirk Walsh talks to Karen Olsson about Anne Carson, the struggles of novel-writing, and her new book, The Weil Conjectures: On Math and the Pursuit of the Unknown. “I loved reading and thinking about math after so many years away, and

Jenny Lee’s Anna K, the anticipated YA retelling of Anna Karenina set in present-day Manhattan (with a hint of Gossip Girl), will be published in early 2020, and will become a TV series shortly after that. Entertainment Weekly has an excerpt… Adam Mansbach has sold his book I Had a Brother Once, an “epic poem” about the suicide of the author’s brother, to One World, an imprint of Penguin Random House. Mansbach is the author of the novels Angry Black White Boy and The End of the Jews, but he is most famous for the mock children’s book Go

Edward Snowden Edward Snowden is writing a memoir. Permanent Record, which details how Snowden “helped create a system of mass surveillance the N.S.A. used to collect information on hundreds of millions of United States citizens and others, as well as the ‘crisis of conscience’ that led him to rebuke the system he helped create,” will be published by Metropolitan in September. Washington Post columnist Alexandra Petri has signed a two-book deal with Norton. One will be “a humor collection exploring the dark absurdity of the Trump era,” and the other “a satirical history of the United States.” This year’s

Juliet Escoria At The Nation, over three dozen writers have signed an open letter urging Congress “to take immediate steps to rectify the atrocious conditions for asylum seekers being detained today.” At The Millions, Jeff Jackson talks to Juliet Escoria about mental illness and why she chose an unconventional narrative structure for her new book, Juliet the Maniac. “In popular culture, a lot of times mental illness and/or addiction narratives are presented as: cause, effect, consequence, remedy. For me, this linear presentation was a lie,” she said. “You have a normal day, and then a completely warped one. Certain

Melissa Gira Grant. Photo: Noah Kalina “Press coverage of Delia Owens since the runaway success of Where the Crawdads Sing has focused on her tomboy girlhood, her passion for helping African wildlife, and the pristine isolation of her Idaho home, portraying her as nearly as unspoiled as her heroine. But Owens’ past is far more dark and troubling than that,” writes Slate’s Laura Miller. “What most of Crawdads’ fans don’t know is that Delia and Mark Owens have been advised never to return to one of the African nations where they once lived and worked, Zambia, because they are

The founder of the Chronicle of Higher Education, Corbin Gwaltney, has died at the age of ninety-seven. Gwaltney founded the paper in 1966 as an outlet for serious reporting about colleges and was active at the publication well into his seventies. According to the Chronicle’s obituary, Gwaltney was a passionate, independent, and careful editor: “For years he read every word destined to be printed in the newspaper, approved all page designs and photo choices, and was the final arbiter of all grammar and style questions.” “I was always an observer and I’m not sure that really being an insider

Delia Owens Delia Owens’s debut novel, Where the Crawdads Sing—the surprise-hit romance-mystery set in 1950s North Carolina—has now sold more than 1 million copies this year. Amazon recently banned the sale of books by Dr. Joseph Nicolosi and other proponents of “gay-conversion therapy.” At VICE, Daniel Newhauser reports that House Republicans are now pressuring Amazon to resume selling those books, including Nicolosi’s A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Homosexuality. According to a document circulated by the Republicans: “These books were available on Amazon until an LGBT activist repeatedly petitioned Amazon to remove the ‘homophobic books’ from the company’s website. Amazon

Namwali Serpell. Photo: Peg Skorpinski The longlist for the 2019 Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize has been announced. Nominees include Namwali Serpell’s The Old Drift, Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Lauren Wilkinson’s American Spy, and Elvia Wilk’s Oval. The shortlist will be announced in September. The photo archives of Ebony and Jet magazines have been sold for $30 million to “a consortium of foundations led by the J. Paul Getty Trust,” the Chicago Tribune reports. The group plans to give the photos to a number of cultural institutions “to ensure public access and use by scholars,

Kate Zambreno Tobias Carroll talks to Kate Zambreno about Rilke, art writing, and her latest book, Screen Tests. “I love it when a work references past books; it’s like a little thrill for me,” she said. “At the opening of Wittengstein’s Nephew, Thomas Bernhard’s narrator reviews a bound copy of Gargoyles [one of Bernhard’s early novels]; one of the nuns puts it on his bed in the hospital where he’s recovering from consumption, and he feels kind of alienated and disgusted by it. I love that this is also the experience for me of looking at a book that

Valeria Luiselli. Photo: Diego Berruecos The longlist for this year’s Booker Prize has been announced. Nominees include Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments, Max Porter’s Lanny, Valeria Luiselli’s Lost Children Archive, and John Lanchester’s The Wall. The shortlist will be announced in September. A n+1, Mark Greif tries to decode and untangle volume one of the Mueller Report, a document he finds both damning of the Trump campaign and also very difficult to follow. (Indeed, many lawmakers have confessed that they haven’t really read it.) The report’s basic opaqueness has led to serious misreadings, as Greif writes: “Each time a newspaper

Helen Phillips. Photo: Andy Vernon-Jones The 2019 Dayton Literary Peace Prize’s Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award has been given to N. Scott Momaday. At Literary Hub, Brian Gresko talks to Helen Phillips about loss, raising children, and her new novel, The Need. “Having a child feels like such a unique experience. Except it’s not, it’s the most basic human experience,” Phillips said. “I tell my students: you can find the universal in the most personal of details.” Charly Wilder wanders Berlin in search of traces of writer Audre Lorde, who lived in the city off and on between

Roxane Gay Roxane Gay, the author of Bad Feminist and other books, has a new book club, which is airing on Vice News. “We’re going to drink some alcohol, we’re going to talk about books, and we’re going to get a little petty.” The first book she discusses—with Mira Jacob, Mike Eagle, and Debbie Millman—is Colson Whitehead’s Nickel Boys. At Public Books, Dan Sinykin has published an essay about how capitalism has shaped American literature. “Fifty years ago,” he begins, “almost every publisher in the United States was independent.” Not so anymore. We are well into the “conglomerate era,”

Laura Lippman At the New York Times, Jennifer Miller wonders if we’ve “hit peak podcast.” Currently, there are more than 700,000 podcasts available for listening, and up to 3,000 new ones started each month. “We’re not necessarily sick of listening to interesting programs” she writes, “but we’re definitely tired of hearing from every friend, relative and co-worker who thinks they’re just an iPhone recording away from creating the next ‘Serial.’” Paul Holdengraber talks to John Waters about summer reading, working at Mary Oliver’s bookstore, and his new memoir, Mr. Know-It-All. The 2019 Whiting Literary Magazine Prizes have been awarded.

Ann Patchett The line-up for the 92nd Street Y’s 2019-20 season has been announced. The schedule includes readings from André Aciman, Jeanette Winterson, Ann Patchett, and more. Literary Hub offers a literary Emmys guide. New York magazine’s Sarah Jones reports on the tensions at First Look Media. In response to recent layoffs and the shuttering of both Topic magazine and The Nib, as well as rumors that “the company had acquired, or planned to acquire, a smutty Netflix clone” owned by Elon Musk’s sister, employees have written a letter to management expressing “deep concern” that the company “might branch

Oyinkan Braithwaite The photo archive of Ebony and Jet are being auctioned by the magazines’ former publishing company, USA Today reports. “It’s something worth saving,” said University of Mississippi journalism professor Samir Husni, who hopes the buyer will donate the collection to a museum or other institution. “This is not something that one individual ought to have or keep for themselves. . . . This is a history that should be open for everybody.” Variety reports that Kwame Onwuachi’s Notes From a Young Black Chef is being adapted into a film. Sorry to Bother You’s Lakeith Stanfield has signed

Colson Whitehead. Photo: Chris Close Columbia Journalism Review’s Jon Allsop wonders why many mainstream media outlets won’t call Trump’s racist remarks about a group of women senators exactly what they are. “Calling a president’s words ‘racist’ or ‘a lie’ can legitimately be thorny. Should we throw the words around? Probably not. But we should use them when they accurately reflect the truth,” he writes. “When we contort ourselves to dance around that fact, the truth is injured.” Despite recently creating a policy about “controversial content” tweeted by public figures, Twitter has decided that Trump’s recent tweets do not merit

Dale Peck Self-styled “hatchet man” Dale Peck wrote a scathing and personal takedown of Pete Buttigieg’s presidential candidacy at the New Republic on Friday. After an outcry from readers, the story was retracted by TNR’s editors, who also apologized. Mayor Pete, for his part, seemed unfazed: “I appreciated that [the] article was taken down. I don’t think it really reflects the New Republic that I know. . . . The most disturbing news story I saw yesterday was the Vice President’s visit to those border facilities.” Publishers Weekly has posted a list of this fall season’s most anticipated books

Vicky Ward Yahoo News reports from the president’s social media summit at the White House yesterday. The gathering of right-wing media pundits and conservative activists was treated to a nearly hour-long speech during which the commander-in-chief railed against the mainstream media and large social-media companies and complained that he should have more followers on Twitter. Entertainment Weekly lists the best recent food books, including Ruth Reichl’s Save Me the Plums, Kwame Onwuachi’s Notes From a Young Black Chef, and Anthony Bourdain Remembered. At Literary Hub, Marcy Dermansky explains how the soap opera General Hospital helped her write her new

Michael Eric Dyson Michael Eric Dyson is working on a new book about Jay-Z that “wrestles with the biggest theme of his career, hustling, and what it looks like when it shows up illegally in the underground and how it looks when it’s part of legitimate society.” Jay-Z: Made in America will be published by St. Martin’s Press next November. Director Brian De Palma is writing his first novel. Are Snakes Necessary? is “‘a blistering political satire’ that doubles as a female revenge thriller,” according to Entertainment Weekly. The book is being cowritten by Susan Lehman and will be

Michael Seidenberg. Photo: Elizabeth Crawford. After Jeffrey Epstein was arrested for the alleged sex trafficking of minors on Saturday, journalist Vicky Ward claimed that her 2003 profile of Epstein for Vanity Fair had been edited to remove credible allegations of sexual misconduct. Ward says that then-editor Graydon Carter cut the testimony of two women and a corroborating witness. Ward tweeted on Monday, “I have thought often about the fact that if my piece had been published in full—with the names and stories of these women—the FBI may have come after Epstein sooner and perhaps some of his victims would