Kiese Laymon The finalists for the 2018 Kirkus Prize have been announced. Nominees include Naima Coster’s Halsey Street, Lauren Groff’s Florida, Ling Ma’s Severance, Beth Macy’s Dopesick, and Kiese Laymon’s Heavy. The winner will be announced in October. Ben Fountain talks to Rolling Stone about the 2016 election, moving from fiction to journalism, and his new book, Beautiful Country Burn Again. Over one hundred contributors to the New York Review of Books, including Luc Sante, Janet Malcolm, and Colm Tóibín,have signed an open letter criticizing the magazine’s termination of editor Ian Buruma. “The project that Me Too has advanced

Akwaeke Emezi. Photo: Elizabeth Wirija The National Book Foundation has announced the winners of this year’s 5 Under 35 award. Hannah Lillith Assadi, Akwaeke Emezi, Lydia Kiesling, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, and Moriel Rothman-Zecher were chosen by a group of judges, including Colson Whitehead, Carmen Maria Machado, and Samantha Hunt. The New York Review of Books has issued a statement about the firing of editor Ian Buruma over the publication of an essay by Jian Ghomeshi. At BOMB, Elizabeth Metzger talks to Sarah Ruhl, a classmate and colleague of the late poet Max Ritvo. The Paris Review is giving its 2019 Hadada Award

Michelle Obama The Times is comparing the book tour for Michelle Obama’s Becoming, which will be released on November 13, to that of a pop megastar: “While other authors typically follow a circuit that may include podcast interviews and stops at the 92nd Street Y in New York and Powell’s Books in Portland, Ore., Mrs. Obama is set to embark on a 10-city tour put together by Live Nation, the world’s largest concert promoter, which manages about 500 artists, including Miley Cyrus, Beyoncé and U2. Tickets are available, while they last, from Ticketmaster.” At The Atlantic, Meghan O’Rourke weighs

Rachel Kushner Rachel Kushner’s The Mars Room, Richard Powers’s The Overstory, Esi Edugyan’s Washington Black, Daisy Johnson’s Everything Under, Robin Robertson’s The Long Take, and Anna Burns’s Milkman make up this year’s Man Booker Prize shortlist. The winner will be announced next month. The critics of the New York Times Book Review talk to John Williams about the Nobel Prize, which will not be awarded this year. “I fully intended to say that I was indifferent to the charade of the Nobel; that it’s madness to believe that literary excellence can be conferred by committee,” said Parul Sehgal, who

Danez Smith. Photo: Hieu Minh Nguyen After facing criticism for publishing a first-person essay by Jian Ghomeshi, Ian Buruma has left the New York Review of Books, the New York Times reports. Buruma told Dutch website Vrij that he felt forced to resign after publisher Rea Hederman “made clear to me that university publishers, whose advertisements make publication of The New York Review of Books partly possible, were threatening a boycott. They are afraid of the reactions on the campuses, where this is an inflammatory topic.” Buruma feels that his decision to step down “is a capitulation to social

Laura van den Berg Tin House talks to Laura van den Berg about Havana, the similarities between travel and horror, and her new book, The Third Hotel. “Speaking generally, the way things appear to be versus the terrifying reality lying in wait just beneath the surface is often foundational to horror,” she said. “Transient spaces like hotels and airplanes ask us to make a pact with surfaces, I think, to believe in the lie of them (the bedspread is clean; those ‘homey’ touches actually feel something like home). Yet there are moments . . . where the surface falters

Haruki Murakami Salesforce co-founder Marc Benioff and his wife Lynne have bought Time magazine. Columbia Journalism Review notes that the Benioffs are “the latest tech entrepreneurs to join a club of billionaire media moguls.” Folio reports that the new owners don’t plan to involve themselves in the magazine’s daily operations. Benioff himself tells the Times that Time will stay in New York. “I’m busy enough with my job. They have a great team. It’s a very strong business,” he explained in a text message. Haruki Murakami has withdrawn himself from consideration for the New Academy Prize. The award was

Sigrid Nunez The National Book Foundation has announced the longlist for the 2018 awards in fiction, which includes Lauren Groff’s Florida, Rebecca Makkai’s The Great Believers, Sigrid Nunez’s The Friend, Tommy Orange’s There There, and others. At Slate, Isaac Chotiner interviews New York Review of Books editor Ian Buruma about why he chose to run an essay by Jian Ghomeshi, who has faced numerous allegations of sexual assault. Ghomeshi says that he is trying to “inject nuance” into his story. Laura Miller concludes that it’s a “terrible personal essay”: “The piece is one long and very weird train wreck.”

Jeffrey C. Stewart Stephanie Clifford, also known as Stormy Daniels, is writing a memoir. Full Disclosure will detail how Daniels “came to be a successful actress and director in the adult film business, her alleged affair with Mr. Trump and ‘the events that led to the nondisclosure agreement and the behind-the-scenes attempts to intimidate her,’” the New York Times reports. The book will be published by St. Martin’s Press next month. The National Book Foundation has announced the longlist for this year’s nonfiction National Book Award. Nominees include Steve Coll’s Directorate S, Sarah Smarsh’s Heartland, and Jeffrey C. Stewart’s

Olivia Laing. Photo: Suki Dhanda The National Book Foundation has released the longlist for the National Book Award in Translated Literature. Nominees include Domenico Starnone’s Trick, Olga Tokarczuk’s Flights, and Tatyana Tolstaya’s Aetherial Worlds. The winner will be announced in November. Yiming Ma has won the The Guardian’s BAME short story prize for “Swimmer of the Yangtze.” At Crimereads, Jo Jakeman compiles a list of her favorite revenge novels, including Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, and Ian McEwan’s Nutshell. Crudo author Olivia Laing talks to Longreads about Kathy Acker, the summer of 2017, and giving up

Katya Apekina In a staff memo obtained by Variety, Bustle founder and CEO Bryan Goldberg announced plans to relaunch Gawker in 2019. Amanda Hale, formerly The Outline’s chief revenue officer, has been hired as publisher. “We won’t recreate Gawker exactly as it was,” Goldberg explained in his memo, “but we will build upon Gawker’s legacy and triumphs — and learn from its missteps.” The Whiting Foundation is looking for submissions for its 2018 Whiting Literary Magazine Prize. The award, received last year by A Public Space, Fence, and Words Without Borders, offers grant money to outstanding literary magazines over

Rachel Cusk. Photo: Jaime Hogge Kate Bush is publishing a book. How to Be Invisible collects lyrics from the artist’s four-decade career and includes an introduction by novelist David Mitchell. The collection will be published by Faber in December. “Essentially, I think all the problems of writing are problems of living,” Rachel Cusk tells Alexandra Schwartz. “I had been brought by my particular path to an experience of certain structures breaking down that I realized were old. For example, today I drove over the Brooklyn Bridge and remembered all the things I’d read about the infrastructure of American roads

Teddy Wayne Archives reveal some of the most cantankerous behind-the-scenes battles between judges of the Booker Prize. Rebecca West once argued that John LeCarre wrote “according to formula,” and that Wendy Owen was a “half-wit.” In 1985, a judge protested winner Keri Hulme’s The Bone People by saying “over my dead body.” And the 1976 prize was so contested that it was finally decided on a coin toss. Bloomsbury’s Liese Mayer bought Teddy Wayne’s forthcoming novel Apartment, which according to the publisher is “a powerful, masterfully written novel about loneliness, sexuality, and class.” According to Publishers Weekly, the book

Jonathan Lethem Politico reports that the Times op-ed by an anonymous Trump administration official has “raised a host of ethical and journalistic questions many have never considered before, including whether Times news reporters—who work independent of the editorial department, which published the op-ed—should now set about determining the identity of an anonymous Times opinion writer.” Newtown: An American Tragedy author Matthew Lysiak is working on a book about Drudge Report founder Matt Drudge. The book will be published by Benbella Books next year. Jonathan Lethem talks to Vulture about the 2016 election, writing as a coping mechanism, and his

Lisa Halliday. Photo: Vittore Buzzi New York Times op-ed editor James Dao talks to CNN about his decision to publish an essay by an anonymous Trump administration official. “We felt it was a very strong piece written by someone who had something important to say and who’s speaking from a place of their own sense of personal ethics and conscience,” he said. “That was our main focus.” Axios has collected responses to the essay from Trump’s supporters and detractors. “What the author has just done is throw the government of the United States into even more dangerous turmoil,” David

Walter Mosley. Photo: David Shankbone The Outline has laid off six employees, including the site’s two staff writers, Fast Company reports. “This news is not fun. It sucks to cut good people,” editor Joshua Topolsky told the Wall Street Journal’s Ben Mullin. “But it is incredibly important to build something sustainable.” “American democracy requires a functioning press that informs voters and creates a shared set of facts,” argues Chuck Todd in The Atlantic’s Ideas section, which officially launched yesterday. “If journalists are going to defend the integrity of their work, and the role it plays in sustaining democracy, we’re

Astra Taylor David Remnick will no longer be interviewing Steve Bannon as part of the New Yorker Festival next month after the invitation drew intense pushback, including the loss of several participants. “There is a better way to do this,” Remnick said in a statement. “If the opportunity presents itself I’ll interview him in a more traditionally journalistic setting as we first discussed, and not on stage.” “When you don’t have equal rights, it gives you a different perspective,” says What Is Democracy? director Astra Taylor on how growing up as a permanent resident in the US has informed

After a run of over sixty years, the Village Voice will cease publication. Owner Peter Barbey, who purchased the Voice three years ago in an attempt to save it, is laying off half its remaining staff and is retaining the rest to “wind things down.” According to The Gothamist, Barbey broke the news by telling his employees on a conference call: “Today is kind of a sucky day. Due to, basically, business realities, we’re going to stop publishing Village Voice new material.”

Mitchell S. Jackson. Photo: John Ricard. At the Chronicle of Higher Education, Andrea Long Chu weighs in on the Avital Ronell Title IX case at NYU. Chu, who worked as Ronell’s teaching assistant last year, writes that it is an open secret at NYU that Ronell is abusive. Chu also takes note of the protective arguments offered by some of Ronell’s peers, who view the sexual-harassment case as an opportunity to think about larger structural issues: “When scholars defend Avital—or ‘complicate the narrative,’ as we like to say—in part this is because we cannot stand believing what most people

Charlene A. Carruthers Slate is collaborating with ProPublica to analyze how political ads are targeting Facebook users. Charlene A. Carruthers talks about her hopes for her book Unapologetic: A Black, Queer, and Feminist mandate for Radical Movements, which was published on Tuesday by Beacon Press: “My greatest hope is that black women and girls love this book, and appreciate this book,” she tells The GlowUp. “Because if black women and girls like it and love it, then everybody else will … if we’re into it, and we take it up, then that means we’re fighting for everybody, because that’s