Newsweek editor in chief Bob Roe, executive editor Ken Li, reporters Celeste Katz and Josh Saul, and International Business Times editor Josh O’Keefe were all fired yesterday, the Daily Beast reports. Anonymous employees noted that four of the fired staff had recently written about the company’s legal troubles. In response, Newsweek senior writer Matthew Cooper has resigned. “This coup d’grace comes at the end of a string of scandals and missteps during your tenure,” Cooper wrote in a letter addressed to CEO Dev Pragad. “Leaving aside the police raid and harassment scandal—a dependent clause

Conventional essays “feel inauthentic because they want control,” White Girls author Hilton Als says in a profile in the Guardian. “I think you have to let the mess come in.”

The Freedom of the Press Foundation has partnered with Archive-It to collect the work of Gawker and LA Weekly, as well as other news outlets and websites that may be threatened by purchase “by a hostile party.”

Former Time executive editor Siobhan O’Connor is joining Medium as the company’s vice president of editorial. At the Columbia Journalism Review, Howard R. Gold looks at the history of the magazine and explains how it became “a victim of its own prosperity, which fostered a culture that discouraged risk-taking and punished failure.”

The Millions talks to Joseph Cassara about 1980s New

The National Book Awards is adding a new prize for translated books. Beginning this year, the new category “will honor a work of fiction or nonfiction that has been translated into English and published in the U.S.” National Book Foundation director Lisa Lucas talked to the New York Times about the decision. “This is an opportunity for us to influence how visible books in translation are,” she explained. “The less we know about the rest of the world, the worse off we are.”

Barbara Kingsolver is working on a new novel. Taking place in both 2016 and 1871, Unsheltered “explores the foundations

Willie Nelson is being inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters. Nelson is the first songwriter to be honored by the group, and joins screenwriter Richard Linklater, novelist Bret Anthony Johnston, and playwright Kirk Lynn among others to be inducted this year. "He's Willie,” the institute explained in a statement. “Do we need to say anything else?"

Late author Helen Dunmore has won the Costa prize for her final book, Inside the Wave.

Atria publisher and president Judith Curr is leaving the company after nineteen years. Curr founded Atria books and later took over the expanded Atria

The New York Times has hired Amal El-Mohtar as the Book Review’s science fiction and fantasy columnist. El-Mohtar is replacing N. K. Jemisin, who has been writing the Otherworldly column for the last two years.

The Observer reports on editorial shake-ups at two Tronc papers. Former New York Daily News editor in chief Jim Rich will return to the same role at the paper, while the Daily News’s current interim editor Jim Kirk has been hired as the editor in chief of the Los Angeles Times. Current LA Times editor Lewis D’Vorkin will be the chief content officer of Tronc.

Poet Danez Smith talks to

Mohsin Hamid, the author of the novels The Reluctant Fundamentalist and Exit West, writes about the disturbing trends of “purity” and nationalism in Pakistan, England, and beyond. “In these pure times, you believe more impurity is desperately needed. Only impurity can save us now,” he writes. “But, fortunately, there are reasons for hope. Our species was built on impurity, and impurity will probably come to our rescue once again, if we let it.”

Shomari Wills talks about the genesis of his book Black Fortunes, a study of African-American millionaires, and about the surprises he encountered

Slate editor in chief Julia Turner explains the decision to close the DoubleX vertical just as the #MeToo movement took off. “Ever since I’ve taken over as editor, it’s felt very strange for me to be the first female editor in chief of Slate, and one of the few female editors in chief of general interest magazines, and have women’s pages still. Like reproductive rights—that goes in the women’s section. News about campus sexual assault policy—that goes in the women’s section,” she said. “Those stories are part of why we want to do this. Those stories are news. . . . Putting all that stuff under

Editorial staff at Slate has voted to unionize with the Writers Guild of America–East. “This process . . . has given us a greater sense of appreciation for each other and our work,” union organizers wrote in a statement. “We feel confident that we can create a contract with input from all our colleagues that will improve standards, offer necessary protections within our volatile industry, and preserve the aspects of the workplace we love.”

James Harding, former head of BBC News, is starting his own media company. Tortoise will focus on “slow news,” which Harding defines as “news with more

Novelist Ursula K. Le Guin has died at the age of 88. Over the course of her career, Le Guin wrote over twenty novels, as well as numerous collections of poetry, short stories, and essays.

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has announced the editors of the 2018 Best American Series. Roxane Gay will work on the short story edition, Cheryl Strayed will take on travel writing, and Hilton Als will edit the essays. Ruth Reichl will oversee the series’s inaugural collection of food writing.

A collection of Sylvia Plath’s belongings, including a typewritten copy of The Bell Jar, is being put up for auction

Former Washington Post journalist and current Fox News host Howard Kurtz is working on a book about the Trump administration. Media Madness: Donald Trump, the Press, and the War Over the Truth will be published by Regnery at the end of January. The Post’s Aaron Blake writes that Kurtz’s book could be “even more damning” than Fire and Fury. Excerpts from the book describe “a president who is acting haphazardly and without the guidance of his aides, making major allegations and policy decisions on whims,” Blake writes. “And the fact that it's how Trump is described by an oft-sympathetic Fox News

In her new weekly column, Elena Ferrante recounts the first time she fell in love.

On February 6, George Saunders will be in conversation with Dana Spiotta at Brooklyn’s Murmrr Theater. Tickets are on sale here.