• Clive James
    February 24, 2017

    Clive James announces new poetry collection; John Podesta joins the "Washington Post"

    Poet and critic Clive James will publish a sequel to his 2015 short-poem collection, Sentenced to Life. Written after a diagnosis of leukemia, his first book was a reflection on death. But James says that his upcoming book, Injury Time, will be much more upbeat. “When I wrote Sentenced to Life, everyone thought I was dying,” he told The Guardian. “But the new drugs are working and the danger now is that I’ll bore everyone to death.” Injury Time will be published by Picador in May.

    Brooklyn Magazine talks to Roxane Gay about success, Twitter, and pulling her book from Simon & Schuster. Gay said

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  • Helen Oyeyemi. Photo: Tom Pilston
    February 23, 2017

    Helen Oyeyemi wins PEN Open Book Award; Sam Biddle on Peter Thiel's NSA connections

    PEN America has announced most of their 2017 Literary Award winners. Helen Oyeyemi’s What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours won the Open Book Award, and Matthew Desmond’s Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City won for nonfiction. Winners of the other prizes will be announced at the end of March.

    The Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalists were announced yesterday. Nominees include Zadie Smith’s Swing Time, Emma Cline’s The Girls, Garth Greenwell’s What Belongs To You, and Frances Wilson’s Guilty Thing.

    The Daily Beast has hired conservative journalist Lachlan Markay as White House reporter.

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  • Tom Hanks
    February 22, 2017

    Writers sign open letter to Donald Trump; Tom Hanks to publish short story collection

    More than sixty writers and artists have signed an open letter from PEN America to President Trump denouncing his executive order on immigration. Signatories include Zadie Smith, Philip Roth, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, among others. “Not only will such a policy prevent great artists from performing,” the letter states, “but it will constrict the interchange of important ideas, isolating the U.S. politically and culturally.” Most of the writers and artists who signed the letter are less than hopeful that it will have any effect on the president. Novelist Jeffrey Eugenides compared the letter to

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  • Liane Moriarty. Photo: Nic Walker
    February 21, 2017

    Milo Yiannopoulos's book cancelled; Liane Moriarty on fame in the US

    After outrage last weekend over a recent video showing Milo Yiannopoulos speaking positively about pedophelia, the Breitbart editor’s book with Simon & Schuster imprint Threshold was cancelled. Yiannopoulos had already pushed the release date to June so that he could include a chapter on the outrage his book deal generated. In a short statement, the company wrote, “After careful consideration, Simon & Schuster and its Threshold Editions imprint have cancelled publication of Dangerous by Milo Yiannopoulos.”

    In addition to his cancelled book, Yiannopoulos’s comments might also have put him on

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  • Neil Gaiman
    February 20, 2017

    Neil Gaiman announces “Neverwhere” sequel; BuzzFeed helps readers escape echo chambers

    Neil Gaiman announced that he is currently working on a sequel to his novel, Neverwhere, twenty years after it was first published. Gaiman said that Neverwhere “was this glorious vehicle where I could talk about huge serious things and have a ridiculous amount of fun on the way.” Now, he says that his work with refugees and observations of the world around him made him feel “that it actually was time to do something.” The sequel, The Seven Sisters, does not have a confirmed release date.

    The New York Times reports that Michael Dubke has been hired as the new White House communications director.

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  • Mark Zuckerberg
    February 17, 2017

    Russian media to cut back on positive Trump stories; Mark Zuckerberg on fake news

    This year’s PEN World Voices Festival will focus on “gender and power in the age of President Trump.” The festival usually highlights a country or continent, but PEN America executive director Suzanne Nossel said that the current political situation necessitated a topic change. “Amid visa bans and an America First foreign policy,” she said, “PEN World Voices is now an important antidote to an America at risk of only talking to itself, fanning baseless fears, and damaging relations with allies around the world.” The 2017 festival take place in New York during the first week of May.

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  • Philip Pullman
    February 16, 2017

    Philip Pullman announces new trilogy; Gizmodo looks for leaks from federal employees

    Philip Pullman announced a new trilogy, “The Book of Dust.” The still-untitled first installment follows Lyra Belacqua, the heroine of his first series, “His Dark Materials,” and will be published in October.

    Jessica Jones actress Krysten Ritter has written a novel. Her psychological thriller, Bonfire, will be published in November by Crown Archetype.

    In the wake of Michael Flynn’s resignation, President Trump, as well as his main right-wing media supporters, have avoided discussing the administration’s ties to Russia and focused instead on the leaks themselves. Trump took to Twitter to say

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  • George Saunders
    February 15, 2017

    Gateway Pundit gets press credentials; George Saunders on his non-traditional novel

    New York magazine has signed a four-book deal with Simon & Schuster. The first, which will celebrate the magazine’s fiftieth anniversary with a collection of covers and photographs from previous issues, will be published next November.

    Banned Twitter-user Milo Yiannopoulos has delayed the publication of his forthcoming memoir, Dangerous, in order to include his thoughts on the uproar over his book deal and the recent protests against him at multiple college campuses in the US. The book will now be published in June.

    The White House has granted press credentials to Lucian Wintrich of Gateway

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  • Naomi Klein
    February 14, 2017

    Naomi Klein joins The Intercept; "Wall Street Journal" editor says criticism is "fake news"

    Naomi Klein is joining The Intercept as a senior correspondent, focusing on the “shocks of the Trump era.” In her announcement, editor in chief Betsy Reed explained, “No one is better than Naomi Klein at exposing the hidden agendas of disaster capitalists and their agents in government.”

    Associated Press photographer Burhan Ozbilici’s coverage of the assassination of Russia’s ambassador to Turkey has been awarded the 2017 World Press Photo of the Year, as well as the top prize for the spot news category. But Stuart Franklin, the chair of the World Press Photo award jury, wrote in The Guardian

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  • Amy Chozick
    February 13, 2017

    Amy Chozick to write campaign memoir; Bill Keller on criminal justice reporting under Trump

    Marshall Project editor Bill Keller talks to the Columbia Journalism Review about the website’s recent Ellie win for “general excellence,” rebuilding trust in the media, and how the Trump administration might affect criminal justice reform. Keller says that the website’s response to the current president’s “law and order” platform includes increased immigration and deportation coverage, which he says “could well be the criminal justice story of the year—a massive mobilization of law enforcement, a push to essentially deputize police and sheriffs as immigration enforcers, huge dockets at

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  • Javier Marias
    February 10, 2017

    ProPublica hiring dozens of journalists; Javier Marias on surviving the Trump administration

    The Trump administration is struggling to fill the role of communications director. Press Secretary Sean Spicer took over the role after Jason Miller, the communications director for the Trump campaign, backed out before inauguration. Steve Schmidt, a former member of the George W. Bush administration and John McCain’s campaign runner, talked to Politico about why the president is having trouble filling a “normally coveted” job. “The communications director job in the White House has always functioned as . . . building and maintaining public approval for the president’s policies,” he said. “

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  • Stephen Sondheim
    February 09, 2017

    Stephen Sondheim wins PEN Award; Emily Temple on why we shouldn't waste books on Trump

    Citing the Daily Mail’s “reputation for poor fact checking, sensationalism and flat-out fabrication,”  editors at Wikipedia have voted to remove the paper from its list of “reliable sources.” Articles from Russia Today and Fox News are still acceptable.

    BuzzFeed talks to the team behind Merriam-Webster’s newly-political Twitter account, which has become a social media sensation after it began tweeting definitions of words and concepts that the current administration doesn’t quite seem to understand. “Anyone who spends their life sifting through how language is used also has to sift through

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