Banker-turned-novelist Amish Tripathi has scored an unprecedented $1 million advance from an Indian publisher for his forthcoming trilogy. The Guardian explains: “Tripathi is one of a new wave of writers selling huge quantities of books which mix reimagined ancient Hindu myths, history, narrative and spiritual wisdom [to] retell stories often drawn from the everyday experiences of middle-class Indian youth in simple language.”

Citing financial pressures, the Washington Post has announced that starting next Monday, it will begin running sponsored content on its website. Ponyter wryly notes that

New Yorkers: If you’re free tonight, check out the fourth Double Take reading series, organized by Bookforum’s own Albert Mobilio. The event asks three pairs of writers to read original writing about shared experiences. Tonight’s event will see Rick Moody and Tim Davis singing about the dinner where they met, John Yau and Eugene Lim remembering Robert Creeley’s memorial service, and Charles Bernstein and Elizabeth Willis discussing “the obvious.”

VIDA has released its annual count of reviewer gender ratios in publications ranging from the New Yorker to the Boston Review (sadly, Bookforum was

After a year marred by plagiarism scandals that led him to give up his staff position at the New Yorker, Jonah Lehrer is facing more bad news: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has announced that, “after an internal review uncovered significant problems” with Lehrer’s second book,How We Decide, it will pull the book from shelves. HMH has “no plans to reissue it in the future,” and will offer refunds to people who already purchased the book.

By looking at mutations in language like they do mutations in genes, geneticists have roughly estimated that Homer composed the Iliad in “762 B.C., give or take

The National Book Critics Circle has announced the winners for the best books of 2012. They are as follows: in the fiction category, Ben Fountain for Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk; in nonfiction, Andrew Solomon for Far From the Tree; in autobiography, Leanne Shapton for Swimming Studies; in criticism, Marina Warner for Stranger Magic; in biography, Robert Caro for The Passage of Power, and in poetry, D.A. Powell for Useless Landscape, or A Guide for Boys.

Barnes and Noble says it has no plans to speed up its store closings over the next ten years, despite recent rumors to the contrary.

In

Benjamin Moser has signed on to write the first authorized biography of Susan Sontag, who died eight years ago at the age of 71. Moser agreed to the project after being approached by Sontag’s son, David Rieff, and literary agent Andrew Wylie. He is the author of Why This World, a biography of Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector (if you’re unfamiliar, read Rachel Kushner’s essay on her fiction) and expects that he’ll finish the book in three to four years.

Bret Easton Ellis explains why, after years of having no interest whatsoever in writing fiction, he “began making notes for a new novel in

For your John Ashbery fix, PennSound has posted new videos and audio recordings of the poet’s recent readings.

David Mitchell and his wife Keiko Yoshida are currently translating the memoir of a severely autistic Japanese boy, the Cloud Atlas author tells the Guardian. Naoki Higashida “tapped out the memoir letter by letter on an alphabet grid on a piece of cardboard” when he was only 13. The couple initially began translating the 2006 memoir for their own purposes—their son is autistic—when they realized it might have a wider appeal. “If I have any influence in the public narrative about

After publicly supporting GOProud, a group of gay Republicans, the liberal MSNBC host and author Chris Hayes has found some unlikely allies, including Daniel Foster of the conservative magazine National Review. “Though I don’t agree with Hayes on much,” Foster writes, “he’s right on this one.”

“It did not feel like Seth MacFarlane was hosting the entertainment world’s most prestigious event, but an Oscar party for his bros in his parents’ basement.” Elissa Schappell, author of the story collection Blueprints for Better Girls, was not amused by the “vile jokes” of the 85th annual Oscars. (

The finalists for the 33rd annual Los Angeles Book Prize were announced last week, and the winners will be awarded on Thursday. In addition to selecting winners in the usual categories, Kevin Starr and Margaret Atwood will be presented with special achievement awards.

In the spirit of Sebald, poet Simon Armitage will attempt to walk all 260 miles of England’s coast this summer with nothing but poems to trade for food and shelter.

Javier Marias’s “introduction to professional writing was facilitated by an uncle who was a maker of soft porn and horror films. During the six weeks the 17-year-old

Bill O’Reilly, the Fox News anchor who has written bestselling books about the killing of two presidents (Lincoln and Kennedy), is now working on a book about the killing of Jesus, to be published by Macmillan. “Killing Jesus will tell the story of Jesus of Nazareth as a beloved and controversial young revolutionary brutally killed by Roman soldiers. O’Reilly will recount the seismic political and historical events that made his death inevitable, and the changes his life brought upon the world for the centuries to follow.”

This week, the New York Times ran an article claiming that short

Three independent bookstores in New York and South Carolina have filed suit against Amazon and the "Big Six" publishers for allegedly violating antitrust agreements by making it difficult for smaller publishers to break into the e-book market.

Debut novelist and recent Iowa Writer’s Workshop grad Erika Johansen has landed a seven-figure book deal for “Queen of the Tearling, a fantasy trilogy inspired in part by Barack Obama.”

In a new foreword to Orlando, Jeanette Winterson sings the praises of Virginia Woolf's shape-shifting novel. The book “refuses all constraints: historical, fantastical,

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Tim O’Brien has left his job as executive editor of the Huffington Post in order to work on historical fiction. O’Brien is now completing “the second installment of his five-book publishing deal." Meanwhile, Arianna Huffington took the opportunity to remind staffers that HuffPost maintains a strict "no book writing" policy. "The policy is that anybody starting a new book must either leave employment or take a sabbatical," a rep confirmed to New York Magazine.

Crime writer Patricia Cornwall has won almost $51 million in a lawsuit against her former

HTMLGiant has found a way to complete a David Markson interview that didn’t quite make it into Bookforum.

Haruki Murakami announced this week that he’ll be publishing a new novel in April, and fans are already beside themselves trying to guess what it will be about. The New York Daily News states (probably correctly) that it’s "safe to bet that there will be cats (that may or may not talk) and probably some awkward sex," while another reader proposes that "it will contain ear porn, a lonely man, a teenage/under-age girl, the war in Manchuria [and] some cooking."

Hilary Mantel, whose novels