Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the author of Americanah, has penned an essay speaking out against the anti-gay law in Nigeria, calling for its repeal: “We cannot legislate into existence a world that does not exist: the truth of our human condition is that we are a diverse, multi-faceted species. The measure of our humanity lies, in part, in how we think of those different from us.”
Rick Perlstein has just announced a new book to be published this summer, The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan, the third volume in his history of American Conservatism.
Juan Tomás Avila Laurel, one of Equatorial Guinea’s most important living writers and most outspoken activists, has gone into hiding to avoid persecution by the official government. Laurel angered government officials after requesting a permit to stage a sit-in protesting police brutality.
James Patterson has declared, “Our bookstores in America are at risk. Publishing and publishers as we’ve known them are at stake. To some extent the future of American literature is at stake.” It’s not the first time we’ve heard this, but Patterson is going beyond complaint and taking action, giving a million dollars of his own money to fifty indie bookstores across the country.
The LA Times Book Prize finalists have been announced, with fifty books across ten categories being nominated, as well as a lifetime achievement award for Susan Straight.
Plans are already underway for Obama’s presidential library, which will most likely be in Chicago (or possibly Honolulu). In the Times, architecture critic and author Witold Rybczynski makes the case that the president should “go small.”