Masha Gessen will deliver this year’s Arthur Miller Lecture at the PEN World Voices Festival, which will be followed by a conversation between the journalist and Samantha Bee. The event will be held on May 7 at Cooper Union in New York.
Dan Rather will publish a book of essays. Spurred by his viral Facebook posts on the election, the president, and the state of the country, What Unites Us will collect Rather’s thoughts on “the institutions that sustain us, . . . the values that have transformed us, . . . and the drive towards science and innovation that have made the United States great.” The book will be released by Algonquin in November.
Former Secretary of State John Kerry announced plans for a memoir with Simon & Schuster. The book, which does not yet have a release date, will look at Kerry’s childhood in Europe, as well as his Navy service, Senate career, and 2004 presidential campaign. “I hope we can produce a good book that captures for readers not so much my story, but some of the lessons learned along the way,” Kerry said in a statement, “including lessons learned the hard way.”
George W. Bush’s twin daughters, Jenna and Barbara, will publish a joint memoir. Sisters First: Stories From Our Wild and Wonderful Life will be published by Grand Central this fall.
At LitHub, Paul La Farge and Ed Park talk about their history of working together, the cult following of H. P. Lovecraft, and La Farge’s new book, The Night Ocean.
Politico looks at the New York Daily News’s new-found tolerance of Trump. Although the tabloid was known for its anti-Trump covers, the Daily News has toned down its coverage under new editor Arthur Browne in order to keep subscribers happy. Joe Pompeo writes that the change has made staff “feel like the air has been sucked out of the room, and they are perhaps coming to terms with the notion that Trump is more popular with segments of their readership than they thought, even in deep blue New York.”
The New York Times investigates whether Russian news site RT is simply the country’s version of BBC, or “the slickly produced heart of a broad, often covert disinformation campaign designed to sow doubt about democratic institutions and destabilize the West.”
