The Library of America announced that it has hired John Kulka to be its new literary director. Kulka—who has held positions at Harvard University Press, Yale University Press, and Basic Books—is replacing editor and author Geoffrey O’Brien, who will conclude his long tenure as LoA’s editor in chief at the end of 2017.
Mattress company Casper is launching its own quarterly print magazine. Woolly “encourages readers to relax with a mix of personal essays, comedic advice columns, yoga instructor confessions and much more,” according to Adweek.
The New York Times talks to Kevin Young about poetry, hoaxes, and his new book, Bunk. In his research, Young found that modern hoaxes are much worse than their predecessors. “They’re worse in their damage and in their intent now,” he said. “And to see that, and be proven right, or prescient, is a kind of hollow victory.”
The South African government is threatening to ban journalist Jacques Pauw’s new book, The President’s Keepers, an exposé of “Jacob Zuma’s compromised government.” The State Security Agency sent a cease and desist letter two days after the book was published, claiming that Pauw’s work was “replete with inaccuracies.” But NB, the book’s publisher, says that it has no plans to withdraw the book.
Through a collection of a year’s worth of New York Times push notifications, Slate examines how “the convergence of Trump and technology and the media landscape, with the invigorated news giants and hungry digital outlets duking it out for our bloodshot eyeballs” has changed the way we live. “For all of our polarization and our partisan bubbles, this inability to detach from the news is something we’ve experienced together,” they write. “We didn’t used to know what was said at every White House press briefing. We didn’t await word of the next mass shooting. We didn’t always wake up expecting news. The cadence of life has changed.”
