The Paris Review has announced the winners of the 2018 Plimpton and Terry Southern Prizes. Isabella Hammad, author of the short story “Mr. Can’aan,” has won the Plimpton Prize for Fiction and David Sedaris has won the Terry Southern Prize for Humor. Both writers will be honored in April alongside Hadada winner Joy Williams.
Simon & Schuster publisher Jonathan Karp has been promoted to president and publisher of the company’s adult publishing division.
Blackrock Productions has bought the screen rights to Ryan Holiday’s Conspiracy. The company is currently deciding whether to develop the project for film or TV.
Peter Thiel claims that he is only wants to buy Gawker in order to get Hulk Hogan money that he is still owed from the trial, and that he has no interest in taking the site offline. “I don’t want the archives,” he said. “I don’t think it makes sense to destroy them. Preserve them, study them instead.”
The New York Times’s Farhad Manjoo reflects on the two months he spent getting his news from print newspapers alone, something he feels was “life changing.” “Turning off the buzzing breaking-news machine I carry in my pocket was like unshackling myself from a monster who had me on speed dial, always ready to break into my day with half-baked bulletins,” he writes. In the end, he came to a Michael Pollan–style revelation: “Get news. Not too quickly. Avoid social.”