Marlon James is writing a television adaptation of his novel, A Brief History of Seven Killings, for Amazon. The show will be directed by Insecure director Melina Matsoukas. “It’s been my dream to bring this story to life onscreen since reading the first line of Marlon’s book,” Matsoukas said in a statement. “I am deeply honored to be entrusted with this tapestry of stories so entrenched in roots, reggae, race, mysticism and politics, while working alongside Marlon to ensure an authentic portrayal of his words.”
Jennifer Palmieri, a former aide to Hillary Clinton, is writing a “book of lessons” for female leaders. Palmieri says that Dear Madam President will “provide all women with advice and lessons learned the hard way to help them lead in their communities, flourish in the workplace, and literally run the world.” The book will be published by Grand Central Publishing next March.
Jenny Zhang |https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/writing-goopily-about-the-body-an-interview-with-jenny-zhang-on-sour-heart/#!|talks to| the Los Angeles Review of Books about the complexity of motherly love in her new story collection, Sour Heart. Zhang points out that caring for children, something usually portrayed as a virtuous task, can also be about domination. “In these stories there’s real tenderness and love that these mothers show their daughters. But there’s also manipulation,” she said. “There are these power dynamics: ‘You are forever beholden to me, because I gave birth to you, and I kept you alive.’”
New York Times book critic Parul Sehgal talks to the paper about her reviewing process, tradition, and criticism as a necessary part of keeping language alive. “In scientific fields, there’s this established idea that you’re always standing on the shoulders of giants—that every discovery pushes the whole enterprise forward,” she said. “I like to think of literature and criticism as an act of pushing something forward, of mapping new terrains, internal and external, of doing things with language that reveal something about what it means to read and to live.”
Vanity Fair’s Gabriel Sherman takes a close look at the Wenner family’s sales pitch for Rolling Stone. Sherman writes that the company is “pitching an austere business plan” that relies on a editorial budget reduction of 30 percent and a switch from biweekly printings to monthly. “Ultimately,” he concludes, “the numbers suggest Rolling Stone will sell for a fraction of what the magazine might have commanded in its heyday, when the cover of Rolling Stone had the power to create stars out of the musicians, actors, and politicians that graced it.”
CNN’s Oliver Darcy examines former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly’s first interview with the network since he resigned last year amidst a sexual harassment scandal. O’Reilly was ostensibly there to promote his new book, but interviewer Sean Hannity encouraged him to appear on the program in the future. “The fact that Fox News executives would permit O'Reilly to return to the network's air and let him use it as a platform to sell books only months after firing him struck some observers—including people inside the network and at least one of the women who accused him of harassment—as peculiar.”
Tonight, Minna Proctor presents her new book, Landslide, at Books Are Magic in Brooklyn.
