In an interview with Bill Maher on Friday, author Gloria Steinem, who is pro–Hillary Clinton, implied that women who support Bernie Sanders are just trying to meet men. “When you’re young, you’re thinking: ‘Where are the boys? The boys are with Bernie.’” But after a group of Sanders supporters started an online petition requesting that she take the statement back, Steinem issued an apology: “In a case of talk-show Interruptus, I misspoke on the Bill Maher show recently, and apologize for what’s been misinterpreted as implying young women aren’t serious in their politics,” she wrote in a Facebook post yesterday. “Whether they gravitate to Bernie or Hillary, young women are activist and feminist in greater numbers than ever before.”
After a bidding war, HarperCollins has acquired a memoir by Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly. Deadline Hollywood says the publisher paid $10 million for the book, but publishing sources told Page Six that the figure is in the $3 million to $4 million range. The book, which as yet is untitled, will be released in the fall.
St. Mark’s Bookshop, the legendary independent East Village bookseller, is losing its fight against eviction, sources say. The store has announced an emergency sale to raise funds, but owes more than $60,000 in back rent, and was recently issued a warrant for a $34,400 tax lien. A lawyer for St. Mark’s says, “They’re probably not going to be around much longer; we’re talking days.”
Alison Bechdel names her ten favorite books.
At Publishers Weekly, Ken Pisani drolly recounts his difficult, humiliating attempts to find a literary agent. “The first thing I learned about rejection is that agents are very, very sorry—nearly every rejection contains an apology or some regret: ‘I am sorry, but we cannot take it on at this time’; ‘We regret to inform you…’ Some of them are frightened: ‘I’m afraid I have to pass’; ‘I’m afraid this isn’t right for me.’”
The New York Times’s public editor, Margaret Sullivan, writes about the paper’s Express Team: eight writers and editors who “quickly develop articles when a topic begins gathering steam on social media.” The team “is a response to a new reality: The Times can no longer just decide, high on its mountaintop, what is news.” Says editor Patrick LaForge: “The reader controls the news agenda much more than 30 years ago.” As Sullivan points out, some readers are not happy with the change (“There is too much fluff and silliness in the so-called news,” one reader responded), but in the end she argues that the paper must experiment, and must “reinvent itself to survive.”
