Anne Carson The unrest at the Denver Post continues, with the paper’s journalists staging a protest in front of the New York City building where the hedge fund that owns the paper is located. Alden Capital, which acquired the paper in 2010, has made the newspaper business a profitable one by cutting costs and laying off staff. Last week, the editorial page editor resigned after an article critical of Alden was blocked by ownership. According to the New York Times, one of the protestors, Elizabeth Hernandez, wore a pin that said “I am a certified pest.” She told the

Rachel Kushner Richard Lloyd Parry has won the Rathbones Folio Prize for his book Ghosts of the Tsunami: Death and Life in Japan’s Disaster Zone. For our winter issue, William T. Vollmann wrote about the book: “A lesser writer might have exploited

Ian McEwan. Photo: Urszula Soltys. The staff at the Denver Post have released a statement heavily criticizing the paper’s ownership, Digital First Media and the hedge fund Alden Capital. The letter was released soon after the editorial page editor, Chuck Plunkett, resigned because an op-ed critical of the owners was blocked by DFM’s chief operating officer. The open letter concludes with a call for the ownership group to make big changes: “It has become vividly clear that they must either invest in the newspaper or sell it to someone who cares about Colorado, and they must do it immediately.”

Ronan Farrow The Swedish Academy has announced that there will be no Nobel Prize in Literature this year. The decision comes in the wake of a sexual harassment scandal, in which photographer Jean-Claude Arnault—who is married to one academy member and friends with others—has been accused of abusing and assaulting at least eighteen women. The Complete Review has a comprehensive list of stories and reactions to the news, including a New Yorker piece where Alexandra Schwartz writes, “It seems inevitable that all this chaos will damage the prestige of the Nobel Prize in Literature. Maybe the bigger surprise is

Amy Chozick BuzzFeed news reports on the newsroom drama at the New York Times in response to Amy Chozick’s new book, Chasing Hillary, about the paper’s coverage of the 2016 campaign. Times staffers have expressed misgivings that the book contains private comments from colleagues, an inside look at the maneuverings of reporters angling to get front-page stories, and a general theme that journalists are driven by ego and ambition as much as by lofty ideals about truth and accountability. For her part, Choznick says, “I haven’t heard any complaints,” while executive editor Dean Baquet’s comment offers a case-study in

Gabriel Sherman. Photo: Nephi Niven The Loudest Voice in the Room author Gabriel Sherman is working on a screenplay about Donald Trump. According to the Hollywood Reporter, The Apprentice will follow Trump’s road to fame and the presidency, “focusing on his early influences like attorney Roy Cohn.” In a statement, Sherman explained that his interest in the film comes from the fifteen years he’s spent reporting on Trump. “I’ve long been fascinated by his origin story as a young builder coming up in the gritty world of 1970s and ’80s New York,” he said. “This formative period tells us

Rachel Kushner. Photo: Lucy Raven Rachel Kushner talks to Entertainment Weekly about art, activism, and her new book, The Mars Room. Although some recent works on the criminal justice system, like Serial and Making a Murderer, have led to activism, Kushner says that wasn’t her aim in setting The Mars Room in a women’s prison. “I don’t think art can be message-y or political,” she said. “Why not just write an op-ed? And I’m not the person to do that.” The Washington Post’s Jason Rezaian is joining CNN as a global affairs analyst. In his tweet announcing the new

Antoni Porowski. Photo: Netflix Antoni Porowski, the food expert from Netflix’s Queer Eye, is writing a cookbook. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2019, the still-untitled book “will continue to promote the simple, healthy, visually appealing fare that marked his culinary approach on the Netflix reboot.” In a statement, Porowski said he’s excited to be publishing the book with “the talented and passionate Rux Martin,” editorial director of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. “We immediately bonded on the importance of hor-d’oeuvres and our mutual love for Vermont,” Porowski explained. Mark O’Connell’s To Be a Machine has won the 2018 Wellcome book

Adam Fitzgerald The Nobel Prize in literature may be canceled this year due to a series of accusations of sexual abuse. In November, French photographer Jean-Claude Arnault, who is married to Nobel academy Katarina Frostenson, was accused of sexual assault or harassment by eighteen women. If the prize is not given, it will be the first time it has been withheld since World War II. The Swedish Academy will make its decision this week, on May 3. Ninety years after it was completed, Zora Neale Hurston’s book about a former slave, Barracoon, is being published this week by Amistad press.

Rita Dove New York Times Magazine editor Jake Silverstein has announced that Rita Dove will be the publication’s poetry editor starting this summer. Dove, a former Poet Laureate of the United States and the author of numerous books—including poetry, short stories, and essays—will take over the job from poet Terrance Hayes. A movie focused on the journalists behind the Harvey Weinstein exposé is in the works. Deadline magazine reports that the film will focus on how reporters Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey and editor Rebecca Corbett broke the Pulitzer Prize–winning story: “The thrust of the film isn’t Weinstein or

Peter Thiel. Photo: Dan Taylor In a press release, George R.R. Martin announced the publication date for his next book, Fire and Blood, and confirmed that “winter is not coming . . . not in 2018, at least.” While The Winds of Winter won’t be arriving any time soon, “imaginary history” Fire and Blood will be published next November. Peter Thiel has withdrawn his bid for Gawker.com. In an agreement with the adviser in charge of the site’s liquidation, HuffPost’s Sara Boboltz reports that Thiel has promised “to not remove Gawker’s content from the internet or to pay anyone

Roxanne Gay. Photo: Kevin Nance In her Medium pop-up magazine Unruly Bodies, Roxane Gay writes about her difficult decision to undergo weight reduction surgery. “I worried that people would think I betrayed fat positivity, something I do very much believe in even if I can’t always believe in it for myself. I worried that everyone who responded so generously to my memoir, Hunger, would feel betrayed,” she writes. “I worried I would be seen as betraying myself. I worried I would be seen as taking the easy way out, even though nothing about any of this has been easy,

Hanya Yanagihara The Guardian profiles Hanya Yanagihara, the author of A Little Life and editor of T: The New York Times Style Magazine. Yanagihara says that besides health care, she decided to take a job with the Times because the collaborative nature of working at a magazine balances out the effects of working on a novel. “Fiction writing is so interior and makes you into an awful person in a lot of ways,” she explains. “The private . . . becomes much more sharply private when you have a job, especially one that’s in the world. It reminds you

Jennifer Egan Jennifer Egan notes the challenges facing the writers collective PEN America now. “At the core of PEN America’s advocacy have always been threats to free expression. Under the Trump administration we’re seeing more of those on our domestic front than most of us could have imagined five years ago. PEN America is uniquely equipped to fight these practices—after all, we’ve been calling out the tactics of repressive regimes for decades.“ Former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe might be the focal point of an upcoming Justice Department criminal investigation, but that isn’t stopping him from meeting with publishers

Jesmyn Ward Time has released its annual 100 Most Influential List. This year, each honoree’s blurb was written by another influential person—Barack Obama wrote about the Parkland students, Mindy Kaling wrote on Issa Rae, and Lee Daniels wrote about Jesmyn Ward. But, as GQ’s Jay Willis notes, “the brand of praise bestowed upon a given cultural luminary by a peer can reveal as much about the author as it does about their assigned subject,” particularly in the case of Donald Trump, who was written up by Ted Cruz. Cataloging the numerous insults and slights leveled against Cruz by Trump

Jhumpa Lahiri Parkland shooting survivors and siblings David Hogg and Lauren Hogg are writing a book with Random House. #NeverAgain, which includes a foreword by Parkland student Emma González, will detail the movement’s purpose and challenges as they attempt to convince lawmakers to enact new gun control legislation. #NeverAgain will be published in June. The shortlist for the 2018 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction has been announced. Nominees include Jennifer Egan’s Manhattan Beach, Patrick McGrath’s The Wardrobe Mistress, and Jane Harris’s Sugar Money. The winner will be announced in June. At the Paris Review, Dan Piepenbring talks to

Alexander Chee The majority of editorial staff at the New Republic have unionized with NewsGuild of New York. “We believe that unionizing is the best way to strengthen our workplace, not just for ourselves but for future generations of journalists,” said staff writer Sarah Jones. “By organizing, we’re simply affirming our commitment to The New Republic’s progressive values. We’re also affirming our commitment to each other.” Harper’s Magazine editor James Marcus was reportedly fired by publisher Rick MacArthur last week for “opposing the publication of Katie Roiphe’s cover story in the March issue.” Marcus told Publisher’s Lunch that although

James Forman Jr. The 2018 Pulitzer Prize winners have been announced. The New York Times and the New Yorker share the Public Service prize for their reporting on Harvey Weinstein, while the Washington Post won the Investigative Reporting category for their coverage of Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore. Other winners include James Forman Jr.’s Locking Up Our Own, Frank Bidart’s Half-light, and Kendrick Lamar’s DAMN. Danez Smith has won the inaugural Four Quartets Prize. The Orchid Thief author Susan Orlean is working on a new book, Entertainment Weekly reports. The Library Book “reopens the case of the 1986 Los

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o The PEN World Voices Festival opens tonight, with events featuring Colson Whitehead, Chelsea Manning, Leila Slimani, Dave Eggers, and others. The festival will take place all week, with panel discussions featuring Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Colm Toibin, Jenny Zhang, Amani Al-Khatahtbeh, Rowan Ricardo Phillips, Hillary Clinton, and many others.  Anticipating high book-buyer demands, Flatiron books has printed 850,000 copies of James Comey’s book A Higher Loyalty (the initial print run of Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury was 150,000). As of Friday, the book (which is scheduled to be released on Tuesday) had already pre-sold 200,000 copies. Comey

J. D. McClatchy. Photo: Geoff Spear At the New Yorker, Alexandra Schwartz remembers her time studying poetry under Yale Review editor J. D. McClatchy, who died earlier this week at the age of 72. Schwartz writes that McClatchy “was a towering, booming presence, commanding, elegant, initially fearsome, later endearing, witty, sharp, amused. He broke his favorite poems down for us, exposing their layers and devices, revealing to us his own admiration for their art.” The 2018 Man Booker International Prize shortlist has been announced. Nominees include previous winners Han Kang and Laszlo Krasznahorkai, as well as Virginie Despentes, Ahmed