paper trail

Susan Choi's Trust Exercise to be adapted for TV; Deborah Levy on where she reads

Susan Choi. Photo: Heather Weston

The screen rights to Susan Choi’s Trust Exercise have been acquired by FilmNation Entertainment, which plans to develop a TV series based on the National Book Award–winning novel. “It’s been incredibly exciting to explore my book anew with such great partners,” Choi said in a statement. “They have expanded the way I see this story, the characters and its form.”

J. W. McCormack is joining The Baffler as fiction editor.

Out editor Phillip Picardi has left the magazine after one year,” WWD reports. Picardi’s departure follows “several rounds of layoffs, severe pay and budget cuts,” and complaints about unpaid freelancers. “Every day of this work has been a challenge,” Picardi said in a statement. “I’m proud to say I did all that I could, with what I had and where I was and I truly gave it my all. My only hope now is that I leave this publication better than I found it.”

On the Maris Review, Maris Kreizman talks to E. Jean Carroll about controlling narratives, Trump, and her new book, What Do We Need Men For?: A Modest Proposal. “None of us can control anything. But I thought I could,” she said about publishing an excerpt from her book, which detailed being assaulted by Trump, in New York magazine earlier this year. “If I could get it on the page and get it in print, and if I had it fact-checked not only by New York magazine but also the publisher of the book. Every fact was checked, which is important. Of course, we control nothing.”

Deborah Levy tells the New York Times “By the Book” column about her favorite places to read. “Maybe under a pine tree in Greece. . . . Sometimes the cicadas are so loud on the Greek islands (especially if I am lying under a pine tree) it’s better to read on a rock and burn up in the sun,” she says. “The rest of the time I read on the subway, which I much prefer to reading in bed — though it has been tricky to carry Benjamin Moser’s ‘Sontag: Her Life and Work’ around with me on the crowded Piccadilly line. It’s possible that if I drop this brick of a book it might break someone’s toe.”