Lauren Groff In May, Fates and Furies author Lauren Groff was interviewed for the New York Times’s “By the Book” column, in which she recommended only books by women. On Saturday, in response to a “By the Book” featuring George Pelecanos, who recommended only books by men, Groff Tweeted: “This one goes out to all the men who contacted me to say that my interview (in these these same pages) was bitterly unfair because I said out that men don’t read women: Here you go, sweet gents.” Little Fires Everywhere author Celeste Ng replied to Groff: “”Has anyone done

Sally Rooney After John McCain’s death on Saturday, his latest book, The Restless Wave: Good Times, Just Causes, Great Fights, and Other Appreciations, which was published by Simon and Schuster in May, climbed to Number 2 on bestseller lists. Meanwhile, other writers dug up their copies of “Up, Simba!,” David Foster Wallace’s masterful essay about going on the road with McCain’s 2000 presidential campaign: Former New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson says that Wallace knew the “real McCain”; Laura Miller looks to the essay to point out that Wallace’s complex attempts to distinguish between what was authentic and

Carlos Lozada Liying Lin, the director of the Beijing Book Fair, shares her outlook for publishing in China. “From our standpoint, we see no evidence of a slowdown—far from it,” she says. “We’re seeing real energy in the sector and a hunger for new formats, new ideas and new content.” Children’s books are big, and so are some works in translation: bestsellers include Steve Jobs, Niall Ferguson, Thomas Picketty’s Capital in the 21st Century, and Jane Eyre. Carlos Lozada, the book critic for the Washington Post, discusses the craft of reviewing. Author Noam Cohen ponders what Jeff Bezos, Mark

Lydia Kiesling. Photo: Andria Lo Snoop Dogg is publishing his first cookbook. From Crook to Cook, which will be published by Chronicle in October, includes “recipes for everything from fine-dining choices such as lobster thermidor to earthier fare such as waffles, plus a gin and juice recipe.” Vulture senior editor Kyle Buchanan is heading to the New York Times. Buchanan will start as a pop culture reporter later this month, and will also lead the paper’s award season coverage as its Carpetbagger columnist. Lydia Kiesling talks to The Rumpus about immigration, children in fiction, and her new novel, The

David Simon. Photo: Krestine Havermann John Lithgow will play Roger Ailes in an upcoming movie about the former Fox News head’s sexual harassment scandal. The cast of the still-untitled project also includes Margot Robbie, Nicole Kidman, and Charlize Theron. New York Times correspondent Ben Hubbard will now serve as the paper’s Beirut bureau chief. “In newspapering, you learn how to approach a world that is not your own, process it, and explain it. And to do that quickly,” The Wire creator David Simon says of how his career as a newspaper reporter prepared him for television writing. “Journalism gave

Ben Marcus Apple has bought the streaming rights to a series based on Nathaniel Rich’s New York Times Magazine 30,000 word article on climate change. “To me, writer’s block is a sign that I probably ultimately don’t give enough of a shit,” Ben Marcus tells Literary Hub in an interview. “I also don’t write so sharply if I don’t care about what I’m doing, and caring is hard to fake.” Lake Success author Gary Shteyngart shows off his “year-round dacha” in upstate New York. At Garage, Philippa Snow wonders if reclusive actress Greta Garbo, who left acting and public

Tom Clark At the Paris Review Daily, Larry Bensky remembers the prolific author Tom Clark, who died on August 17th. Clark was a poet, biographer, novelist, and nonfiction writer who also blogged daily with his wife at Beyond the Pale, a photo and poetry site that focused on the daily life of refugees. From 1963 to 1973, Clark was the poetry editor of the Paris Review. Bensky quotes some of Clark’s last words from his blog, in a post titled, “the dance of conquest is going to have to wait/museum of memory” : “your twittering machine won’t let you

Nate Chinen Longreads has an interview with former New York Times staff critic Nate Chinen, who “might have been the last full-time jazz reviewer at any American newspaper.” In his new book, Playing Changes: Jazz for the New Century, Chinen looks at the twenty years he spent writing about live music, and argues that jazz has recently entered a rich, productive, and expensive phase. “The culture of jazz has shifted perceptibly during my time covering it. It’s much more permeable and permissive and dynamic and fluid. I think that’s a really exciting development,” Chinen notes. “I’m a big proponent

Ottessa Moshfegh “It’s been really exciting to give myself the time to delve into nonfiction, specifically cultural histories of China and America at the turn of the twentieth century,” Ottessa Moshfegh told the Amazon Book Review about her next project, a novel about a Chinese immigrant coming to the US at the turn of the century. “I’m at the beginning of it, following breadcrumbs, and watching the story weave itself together. It’s a delicious place to be in a project, before the grueling work of actually writing begins. So I’m taking my time.” As part of its expansion into

Min Jin Lee The New York Times has collected the editorials of the hundreds of newspapers across the country criticizing Trump’s attacks on the press and remind readers of the value of journalism. “Insisting that truths you don’t like are ‘fake news’ is dangerous to the lifeblood of democracy,” they write. “And calling journalists the ‘enemy of the people’ is dangerous, period.” Participating newspapers include the Topeka Capital-Journal, one of the few publications to endorse Trump in 2016. The Dayton Literary Peace Prize finalists have been announced. Nominees include Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West, Jenny Erpenbeck’s Go, Went, Gone, Min

Hannah Gadsby Hannah Gadsby, creator of the Netflix special Nanette, is writing a book. Ten Steps to Nanette will detail the “funny and sometimes dark events of the Australian comedian’s life leading up to her realization that she had to quit comedy as she knew it.” Ballantine has reportedly bought the US publishing rights to Gadsby’s book, which will come out in Australia next year. Axios has hired Felix Salmon to write a weekly newsletter with “a focus on big personalities in markets and business,” Vanity Fair’s Joe Pompeo reports. Jeremiah Terminator LeRoy, a feature film about JT Leroy

V.S. Naipaul The tributes to and remembrances of V.S. Naipaul—who died this weekend at the age of eighty-five—continue to pour in: At the New York Times, novelist Aatish Taseer remembers his friend as both cruel and tender; at the New Yorker, George Packer recalls reading Naipaul’s A Bend in the River while serving in the Peace Corps in West Africa, writing, “I came under the spell of his prose before I knew not to like him”; at the New York Review of Books Daily, Ian Buruma remembers the author’s “fastidiousness,” arguing, “It is tempting to see Naipaul as a

V.S. Naipaul V.S. Naipaul—the Trinidad-born author who went on to become one of the most evocative portrayers of postcolonial life, winning the Nobel Prize for literature in 2001—has died at age eighty-five. Amitava Kumar ponders Naipaul’s complicated legacy. At the New Republic, Jeet Heer remembers the “towering writer and deeply flawed man.” Stephen King inspired a “meme meltdown” when he asked his Twitter followers a question about Trump’s “space force.” Harper Design will publish a book by Justin Timberlake this October. At The Atlantic, Jesse Lichtenstein writes about “how poetry came to matter again.” Today’s poets “are immigrants and

Olga Tokarczuk At the Los Angeles Review of Books blog, Kyle Raymond Fitzpatrick examines how socioeconomic status drives the characters of Gillian Flynn’s books. “Whether filthy rich or debt-ridden, her characters are motivated by an original sin tied to an economic woe, particularly one that has shifted their life to or from success,” he writes. “The results? Persons so crazed by money that they kill.” The New York Times’s Tobias Grey profiles Olga Tokarczuk, whose novel Flights won the Man Booker International Prize in May for its English translation by Jennifer Croft.  Times op-ed columnist Bret Stephens attempts to welcome

Crystal Hana Kim ProPublica is expanding its Local Reporting Network to include investigative reporting on government and politics at the state level. The grant will cover the salary and benefits for reporters at seven news outlets. Kate Lewis is replacing Joanna Coles as Hearst’s chief content officer. At Hazlitt, Nicole Chung talks to Crystal Hana Kim about inherited trauma, storytelling, and Korean identity in her new book, If You Leave Me. Kim said she was surprised by some of her early readers’ perceptions of life during the Korean War. “Once I workshopped a chapter . . . one of the

Catherine Lacey. Photo: Willy Somma The Guardian has tallied the votes for its Not the Booker shortlist. Nominees include Rebecca Ley’s Sweet Fruit, Sour Land, Naomi Booth’s Sealed, Ariel Kahn’s Raising Sparks, Will Dean’s Dark Pines, and Dervla McTiernan’s The Ruin. A sixth nominee will be announced next week. Apple has bought the series rights to Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko. Soo Hugh has signed on to write and produce the adaptation. Catherine Lacey talks to Hazlitt about Lydia Davis, turning real people into characters, and her new short story collection Certain American States. “There’s this interaction between any writer’s

Joanna Coles At Litery Hub, Daniel Crown writes about Victor Klemperer, the scholar and Nazi-era diarist. Crown argues that Klemperer’s memoirs, which cover the years 1933–45 and were first translated into English in the 1990s, are becoming newly relevant as a first-hand look at how a democracy can break down. Tonight at Books are Magic, R. O. Kwon discusses her new novel, The Incendiaries.

Jill Soloway Jill Soloway’s new, Amazon-backed imprint, Topple—which will publish books by women of color and writers who identify as gay, queer, bi, trans, and gender nonconforming—has acquired its first two books: LGBTQ advocate Precious Brady-Davis’s I Have Always Been Me and Lucille Scott’s An American Coven(ant). Brady-Davis’s memoir chronicles her “traumatic childhood of abandonment and neglect and her resilience as a biracial, Pentecostal, queer young person growing up in Omaha, Nebraska.” Scott’s book is, according to Amazon, a “queer-feminist pop history of how mystical traditions intersected with modern feminism in America.” In a new Publishers’ Weekly survey, one

Anna Wintour According to the New York Times, Conde Nast lost $120 million last year because of a sharp decline in print ad revenue. The company has tried to cut costs—including laying off eighty employees last year—but is still in the red. Conde Nast is said be selling the magazines Golf Digest, W, and Brides. The company’s chief executive, Robert A. Sauerberg Jr., is trying to quiet rumors that Vogue editor Anna Wintour wants to leave, saying Wintour “has agreed to work with me indefinitely in her role as editor in chief, Vogue, and artistic director of Condé Nast.”

Sarah Jeong. Photo: James Bareham The 92nd Street Y has announced the lineup for its upcoming season of readings and talks. The schedule includes appearances by Gary Shteyngart, Jonathan Franzen, and Karl Ove Knausgaard, among others. Kate Atkinson will start the season on September 25 with a talk on her upcoming book, Transcription. Sarah Jeong is joining the New York Times as the editorial board’s lead technology writer. Currently a senior writer at The Verge, Jeong is also the author of The Internet of Garbage. “Sarah has guided readers through the digital world with verve and erudition, staying ahead