Jenny Erpenbeck and her translator Susan Bernofsky have won the £10,000 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize for The End of Days, which looks at the twentieth century through one woman’s several possible fates. Erpenbeck is the first living German writer to receive the prize (W.G. Sebald got it posthumously for Austerlitz, as did Gert Hofmann for The Film Explainer).
Chelsea Manning has a piece in the Guardian marking five years since she was first locked up for releasing the Iraq and Afghanistan “war diaries.”
Gawker writers will hold a June 3 vote on whether to unionize. CEO Nick Denton is taking it rather well so far. Hamilton Nolan, who has been leading the drive for a union, suggests that if Gawker Media “can be the first big company in this industry, new media-ish kind of thing” to organize in this way, that’s “good for Nick’s legacy. It’s good for Nick as a leader. It’s something good that Nick could do, I think, for the whole industry.” Buzzfeed and Vice, take note.
In October, Gloria Steinem will publish My Life on the Road, her first full book in 20 years. But for anyone else who’s written or is currently working on a memoir, Jezebel suggests you have mercy and just hold down the delete key for 45 minutes.
Margaret Atwood takes her manuscript “Scribbler Moon” to a forest in Oslo as part of a project called Future Library: It won’t be read until the trees planted there last year are cut down in 2114 for paper on which to print it. A hundred years, a hundred writers—David Mitchell is up next.
And while we’re on the subject of nostalgic futurism, if you missed this Douglas Adams fan’s tribute from the International Space Station earlier in the week, go back in time and watch.