paper trail

Remembering Vonda N. McIntyre; A new Whitey Bulger biography

Meghan Daum

The Hugo and Nebula award winner Vonda N. McIntyre—whose science-fiction novels, including Dreamsnake, put women at the center of a genre that had typically been dominated by male protagonists—has died. “The modern feminist movement was just gaining steam,” McIntyre recalled in a 2010 interview. “And there was a lot of controversy in science fiction about whether women should have anything to do with science fiction at all, which I actually found quite hurtful.”

Sally Rooney, George Saunders, Emily Ruskovich, and Mathias Énard are among the ten writers shortlisted for the €100,000 International Dublin Literary Award.

“Since at least mid-2017, Trump has been talking about the post-presidential memoir he will write, or, more likely, have ghostwritten on his behalf,” according to the Daily Beast. “He is planning on it being explosive and assumes (not without reason) that it will be a New York Times bestseller.”

Eimear McBride, Sinead Morrissey, Nick Laird, and other Irish authors respond to Brexit.

Season two of Lost Notes, the podcast produced by writer Jessica Hopper (Night Moves and The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic), will be available soon. According to Hopper: “This season is about legacy, and the stories are phenomenal. We have pieces from folks you know and love, including Hanif Abdurraqib on Cat Power, and deep dives on Fanny and Billy Tipton, a tale of teen siblings, diaspora and british new wave colliding, John Fahey's life story told from the perspective of the women who knew and loved him best.” You can hear a trailer (and subscribe) here.

Book deals: William Morrow has bought the North American and audio rights to Casey Sherman and Dave Wedge’s Misery Mountain: The Inside Story Behind the Pursuit, Capture and Killing of Mob Boss Whitey Bulger, about the notorious Boston mobster. Gallery Books has purchased The Problem with Everything by Meghan Daum, the author of the essay collections My Misspent Youth and The Unspeakable.