Clifford J. Levy. Photo: James Hill The New York Times has chosen Clifford J. Levy as its next metro editor. Levy was most recently the paper’s deputy managing editor, and had been heavily involved in the Times’s digital expansion. “The position will take him off the print masthead, but it may offer a more positive long-term outcome,” Vanity Fair’s Joe Pompeo explains. “In fact, according to Times sources familiar with the process, the move was pitched to Levy as an important gesture, and one that would make him a stronger candidate for executive editor when the time comes.” The
R.O. Kwon. Photo: Smeeta Mahanti Bob Woodward is writing a book about the Trump administration. Fear: Trump in the White House “reveals in unprecedented detail the harrowing life inside Donald Trump’s White House and how the president makes decisions on major foreign and domestic policies.” The book will be published by Simon Schuster in September. Entertainment Weekly has an exclusive excerpt from Kristen Roupenian’s upcoming collection, You Know You Want This: “Cat Person” and Other Stories. The short story collection will be published by Scout Press next January. The Incendiaries author R.O. Kwon talks to Signature about cults, losing
Kevin Young New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture has purchased a number of never-before-published writings by Malcolm X. Among the writings are three chapters from The Autobiography of Malcolm X, which were cut from the book after his assassination in 1965 because they were considered too controversial. In 1992, a biographer was allowed to look at the chapters for fifteen minutes, but aside from this they have been kept from the public. The poet and critic Kevin Young, the Schomburg’s director, says: “The Autobiography is one of the most important books of the twentieth
Shirley Jackson Paramount Pictures is planning a feature film adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery, with a screenplay by Jake Wade Wall. Producer Frank Marshall told Deadline: “I liked what Jake was doing in developing it and bringing up to the present day. It’s has a dystopian, Handmaid’s Tale feel about it, which makes it very timely. And, it has a great twist at the end.” Former White House press secretary Sean Spicer is on a book tour. It’s off to a rough start. The Overstory author Richard Powers talks to The Guardian about sci-fi, life-changing books, and the
Kevin Jared Hosein Kevin Jared Hosein has won the Commonwealth Prize for his short story, “Passage,” which was written in Trinidadian English Creole. Although Hosein was concerned that readers might not understand the language, novelist and Commonwealth Prize jury chair Sarah Hall said that the story was a quick favorite. “It balances between formal language and demotic, ideas of civility and ferality, is tightly woven and suspenseful, beautifully and eerily atmospheric, and finally surprising,” she said. Daniel Kolitz attends the fifth annual David Foster Wallace Conference in Illinois, where organizers and attendees wonder how to “negotiate the fact that
Laura van den Berg Laura van den Berg talks to the Paris Review about tourism, zombies, and her latest novel, The Third Hotel. Van den Berg says that she started writing the book while living in a possibly-haunted home at Bard College. “I had been bouncing around between various campuses for a few years and that winter I was on the road a lot because I had just put out my first book and my husband and I were spending too much time apart and my father was ill—life felt so transient, as if everything was moving too quickly
Rachel Kushner The longlist for the 2018 Man Booker Prize has been announced. Nominees include Rachel Kushner’s The Mars Room, Richard Powers’s The Overstory, and Sally Rooney’s Normal People. The list also includes Nick Drnaso’s Sabrina, the first graphic novel to be longlisted for the prize. Susan Fowler Rigetti, the former Uber engineer whose Medium post about sexual harassment at the company led to the firing of its CEO, is joining the New York Times as a San Francisco–based technology opinion editor. Tronc is making severe staff cuts at the New York Daily News. The New York Times reports
Elisabeth Thomas .” He has been arrested and is facing prosecution. Now, cult writer Chuck Palahniuk—best known for his novel Fight Club—is alleging that Webb’s crimes have wiped out his savings: The author says he might have to “sell his house to stay afloat.” But in an a profile posted at the Guardian, Palahniuk is more interested in talking about Adjustment Day—his new novel about American segregation—and why the incel (involuntary celibate) movement has chosen Fight Club as its bible. “It shows,” says Palahniuk, “how few options men have in terms of metaphors.” Jonathan Gold, the Pulitzer-winning restaurant critic
Alexander Chee Chance the Rapper has purchased the Chicagoist website from WNYC, who bought the site along with Gothamist last year. “WNYC’s commitment to finding homes for the ‘ist’ brands, including Chicagoist, was an essential part of continuing the legacy and integrity of the site,” Chance said in a statement. “I look forward to relaunching it and bringing the people of Chicago an independent media outlet focused on amplifying diverse voices and content.” Caitlin Moran talks to Entertainment Weekly about writing her latest novel, How to be Famous, during the start of the #MeToo movement. “I’d always known the
Irin Carmon Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie is writing a book. The Huffington Post reports that Let Me Finish: Trump, the Kushners, Bannon, New Jersey, and the Power of In-Your-Face Politics will be a “‘no-holds-barred account’ of his political life and controversies, including his time with President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign.” Let Me Finish will be published by Hachette next January. Irin Carmon has been hired as a senior correspondent for New York magazine. “This is a slim, quick read that at its best feels like a kind of annotated syllabus for a popular college class with a
N.K. Jemisin. Photo: Laura Hanifin California Senator Kamala Harris is writing a book. The Truths We Hold: An American Journey will be both a memoir and a current events book, something the New York Times notes is “a mixture well-known to campaign books.” The Truths We Hold will be published by Penguin Press in 2019. Lin-Manuel Miranda’s morning and evening tweets are being collected into a book. Gmorning, Gnite! Little Pep Talks For Me You, which includes illustrations by Jonny Sun, will be published this fall by Random House. Hugo Award-winner N.K. Jemisin is publishing her first short story
Marlon James A lawsuit has been filed against the creators of S-Town. The estate of John B. McLemore alleges that McLemore, the focus of the podcast, “didn’t give permission to broadcast the intimate details of his sexual orientation, mental state and other aspects of his life.” Marlon James, Victore LaValle, Danzy Senna and more tell the New York Times about the scariest books they’ve read. James writes that at thirteen, Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist shook his sense of “suburban security.” “I agonized over questions I never agonized over before. What if everyone died, leaving me alone?” he remembered. “Adults
Karl Ove Knausgaard Joseph O’Neil, the author of the novel Netherland, talks with Guernica about political fiction, his favorite Supreme Court decision, and the characters in his new book of stories, Good Trouble: “These are, for the most part, bourgeois American men and women that we’re reading about. They don’t lay a greater claim to one’s compassion or understanding than anyone else, and in fact they probably have a weaker claim than most, because they’re all set, in theory. But they happen to be the people I feel I can write about with maximum authority—and they happen to be
Ahmet Altan Bleacher Report and Bustle founder Bryan Goldberg bought Gawker at auction yesterday for $1.13 million. The deal will be approved by a bankruptcy judge on Tuesday. “We have no immediate plans to re-launch Gawker,” Goldberg wrote in an email obtained by CNN after the sale. “For now, things will stay as they are. I’m very excited about the possibilities for the future of Gawker.” Granta Books is publishing a memoir by Turkish novelist and journalist Ahmet Altan, who is currently serving a life sentence in prison after being arrested in September 2016 in a government round-up of
Michiko Kakutani Michiko Kakutani returns to the New York Times books section, this time as an interviewee. Kakutani tells the “By the Book” column that leaving her job as a book reviewer has given her more time to binge read. “Not reviewing all the time has also meant that I can at least sometimes turn off the analytic part of my brain — which makes mental notes about things like narrative structure, language and tone — and recover the innocence of reading for the sheer pleasure of it.” At the Los Angeles Review of Books Blog, Nathan Kalman-Lamb looks
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Recode editor at large Kara Swisher is joining the New York Times as an opinion contributor. “The power and influence of the tech companies is among the most important and complex stories of our era, and we are very excited at the prospect of having Kara bring her experience, intellect and courage to bear for Times readers,” the company said in a statement. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie talks to Vulture about raising children, feminism, and Philip Roth. “There was a humanity in Philip Roth’s work that is often overlooked when we talk about his misogyny. I read
John Lanchester The New Republic reflects on Barnes Noble’s recent firing of its chief executive Demos Parneros, the company’s fourth CEO in five years. Once the “most disruptive company in publishing,” BN has been long a high-profile failure, with store closings, sluggish Nook sales, and diminishing revenue. Some argue that the company, still important to the US publishing community, is “too big to fail.” But the company is currently dealing with many hard-to-solve problems, including its own “chaos.” The Bookseller is excited about The Wall, the forthcoming novel by John Lanchester, the novelist (Capital) who also writes about economics
Priscilla Gilman Former Fox News co-president Bill Shine has officially joined the Trump administration as a presidential assistant and deputy communications chief of staff. “The loudest voices opposing Shine’s appointment are not coming from progressive activists and women’s groups,” notes BuzzFeed News. “They’re coming from within the conservative media world.” Lauren O’Neill-Butler talks to philosopher and artist Adrian Piper about the intersection of her two fields, resisting oppression, and consciousness. “Our reach is so much greater, but people’s attention span is so much shorter,” says Priscilla Gilman on the life of a critic in the age of social media.
Sheila Heti The 2018 Caine Prize for African Writing has been awarded to Makena Onjerika for her short story “Fanta Blackcurrant. A graduate of New York University’s MFA program, Onjerika now lives in Kenya where she is working on a novel. At Granta, Sheila Heti and Tao Lin interview each other about their books, chemical detoxing, and the difficulties of writing. “When I was younger I sort of resented that just writing wasn’t enough – that it also had to be completed to be an object of use for the world,” said Heti. “But now I think that it