Kristen Roupenian. Photo: Elisa Roupenian Toha Harper Lee’s estate has filed a lawsuit against Aaron Sorkin’s Broadway adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird, the New York Times reports. Although the contracts for the play were signed in 2015 before Lee’s death the following year, her estate’s lawyer filed the challenge after reading a draft of the script last fall. According to the Times, “a chief dispute in the complaint is the assertion that Mr. Sorkin’s portrayal of the much beloved Atticus Finch, the crusading lawyer who represents a black man unjustly accused of rape, presents him as a man

Alan Hollinghurst. Photo: Larry D. Moore The New York Times talks to Alan Hollinghurst about Englishness, chronicling gay history through fiction, and why he prefers to write about the past rather than the modern era. “Contemporary life doesn’t suggest stories to me in quite the same way as the past,” he explained. “Contemporary life doesn’t have the things I find most interesting. . . . Secrecy, concealment, danger.” St. Martin’s Press has bought the rights to Pope Francis’s book. A Future of Faith: The Path of Change in Politics and Society will be published in August. Richard Flanagan’s Man Booker–winning

Nancy Dubuc The longlist for the Man Booker International prize has been announced. The list includes two former winners of the award: Han Kang, who won in 2016, is nominated this year for The White Book; and László Krasznahorkai, who won in 2015, is being considered again for The World Goes On. The longlist also includes Jenny Erpenbeck, Antonio Muñoz Molina, and Virginie Despentes among the thirteen nominees. The short list will be released on April 12, with the winner to be announced on May 22.  Apple has purchased Texture, a digital magazine subscription service. At the SXSW conference,

Junot Diaz Junot Diaz says he wrote his new illustrated children’s book, Islandborn, for his goddaughters, who were, like the charcters in the book, born in the Dominican Republic and now live in the Bronx. “If kids of color can read about white characters in children’s books all day, the only thing preventing the reverse is a malign set of racial policies,” Diaz tells the Washington Post. “The white default is, in some ways, the cornerstone of white supremacy. It’s not some innocent issue.” At The Paris Review, poet and critic Stephanie Burt writes a letter to the future

Mitzi Angel. Photo: Oliver Holms Farrar, Straus and Giroux has appointed Faber Faber publisher Mitzi Angel as its publisher. Angel will take over later this year for longtime publisher Jonathan Galassi, who will stay on as president and continue to acquire and edit books. “There’s that great line from ‘The Leopard’ where one of the characters says, ‘If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change,’” Galassi said of the decision. “Publishing has changed radically in the last 15 years, and we need to hold to the core of what we’re doing, but change

Mary Gaitskill The Paris Review has announced the winners of the 2018 Plimpton and Terry Southern Prizes. Isabella Hammad, author of the short story “Mr. Can’aan,” has won the Plimpton Prize for Fiction and David Sedaris has won the Terry Southern Prize for Humor. Both writers will be honored in April alongside Hadada winner Joy Williams. Simon Schuster publisher Jonathan Karp has been promoted to president and publisher of the company’s adult publishing division. Blackrock Productions has bought the screen rights to Ryan Holiday’s Conspiracy. The company is currently deciding whether to develop the project for film or TV.

Jann Wenner. Photo: Albert Chau Joe Pompeo looks at Jay Penske’s plan for remaking Rolling Stone, which includes both Wenners staying on at the magazine. Pompeo asked Jann Wenner biographer Joe Hagan whether keeping the elder Wenner around will help or hurt the magazine. “I’ve always doubted the future of Rolling Stone without Jann Wenner,” Hagan said. “Someone like him has to ask whether the legacy is a burden more than an asset. Can you hit the reset and make Rolling Stone into a thing that feels vital again, for people who have never listened to the Eagles, or

Ottessa Moshfegh In honor of Women’s History Month, New York Times book critics compile a reading list of novels by women, and discuss ”writers who are opening new realms to us, whose book suggest and embody unexplored possibilities in form, feeling and knowledge.” From Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels to Ottessa Moshfegh’s Homesick for Another World, “each book’s utterly distinct style emerges as its women try to invent a language for their lives.” Attn is partnering with Showtime to create a 60 Minutes–style news program. The half-hour show will “bring a youthful, provocative perspective to coverage of politics, socio-economics and

Jennifer Egan Pulitzer-winning novelist Jennifer Egan (A Visit from the Goon Squad) has been named the new president of PEN America, the writers organization devoted to freedom of expression and human rights worldwide. She follows Andrew Solomon, who ran PEN for three years. “The power and meaning of the written word are central to the complexities we face today—both as a nation, and globally,’’ Egan says. “To my mind, freedom of expression is a basic human right. I’m honored to uphold and act as a steward of this right, and of PEN America’s mission.” The Rumpus has posted its

Ian Buruma Ian Buruma, editor of the New York Review of Books and author of the new memoir A Tokyo Romance, talks to the New York Times’s By the Book section about travel writing, reading the classics, and the literary influences of his youth. “I was thrilled by Henry Miller, but perhaps not for entirely literary reasons. Another influence was John Cleland’s “Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure,” which I found on my father’s bookshelves. Again, literary merit was of secondary importance,” he said. “I recognize that it is unusual to get one’s sexual education from an

Rachel Rosenfelt. Photo: Victor Jeffreys III. In February, a Turkish court handed out a life sentence without parole to novelist Ahmet Altan, professor Mehmet Altan, and journalist Nazli Ilicak, along with three other media employees, for supposedly being involved in this summer’s coup attempt by sending “subliminal messages” on television. In the New York Times, Ahmet Altan writes about the sentence and his imprisonment: “We will spend the rest of our lives alone in a cell that is three meters long and three meters wide. We will be taken out to see the sunlight for one hour a day.

Jill Soloway Jill Soloway is starting their own imprint, Topple Books, with Amazon publishing. Soloway says of the new venture: “We live in a complicated, messy world where every day we have to proactively re-center our own experiences by challenging privilege. . . . With Topple Books, we’re looking for those undeniably compelling essential voices so often not heard.” According to Ryan Holiday’s new book, Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue, Thiel considered illegal actions such as bribery, hacking, and theft against Gawker Media after Valleywag claimed Thiel was gay in a 2007 post.

Radhika Jones. Photo: Earl Wilson Joe Pompeo writes about New York Times Opinion editor James Bennet, and the unhappiness in the newsroom over the direction the op-ed pages have been taking. Bennet was charged with making “provocative” hires to shake up the section, but the short-lived career of tech writer Quinn Norton—who was quickly dismissed after Twitter users pointed out her friendship with a neo-Nazi—and the hiring of Bret Stephens, a climate change denier, have left Times readers feeling displeased and staff members “embarrassed.” For his part, Bennet told Pompeo, “Look, we’re recruiting different types of writers than we

Michelle Obama Michelle Obama’s memoir, Becoming, will be released on November 13. The book was acquired by Crown Books, along with a book by Barack Obama, earlier this month, for an undisclosed amount that has been the subject of much speculation (the Financial Times reported that the publisher paid $65 million for the two titles). Stphen Rubin was once known for launching unknown writers like Dan Brown and John Grisham into bestseller stardom, but when he left Random House to become the president of Henry Holt nine years ago, many considered his career to be over. And then he

Terese Marie Mailhot CBS News senior foreign affairs correspondent Margaret Brennan has been hired as the next Face the Nation moderator, replacing John Dickerson, who replaced Charlie Rose on CBS This Morning earlier this year. The New York Times notes that Brennan’s new role makes her “the only woman currently serving as a solo anchor of a major Sunday political affairs show.” Lupita Nyong’o has signed on to play the role of Trevor Noah’s mother in the film adaptation of his memoir, Born a Crime. Literary Hub talks to Jeff VanderMeer about what it’s like to have your novel turned

Sigrid Nunez The Guardian has an article explaining the chaos at Newsweek magazine, where management tried to shut down a story by its reporters about the publication’s ties to a Christian college. The magazine’s offices were raided by the DA on January 18th, and since then, the staff has been trying to dig into the reasons for the raid. In the process, there have been editors and reporters fired and charges by staff that executives tried to subject the reporting to an unethical review process. At Columbia Journalism Review, Joel Simon weighs in on why the dismissal of editors is

Adeshina Emmanuel A Newsweek story about the magazine’s ties to a Christian university was published last night with a lengthy note from the editors. The letter charges the publication’s leadership with trying to suppress the article. The opening paragraph states that two editors and a reporter were fired “for doing their jobs,” that two more reporters were threatened with termination by management, and that the article was subject to a review process that “involved egregious breaches of confidentiality and journalism ethics.” One Newsweek employee told the Daily Beast “I have never experienced a newsroom with such astonishingly poor leadership.

Carmen Maria Machado. Photo: Tom Storm. Carmen Maria Machado talks to Guernica about short stories, queer identity, and why memoir writing scares her. “With memoir, there is no place to hide; the screen of fiction is gone and it feels really naked, really vulnerable,” she said. “I’m afraid people are going to ask me all kinds of overly personal questions when it comes out.” A new algorithm developed at the University of Illinois and the University of California at Berkeley suggests that women were better represented in nineteenth-century novels than they have been in more modern fiction. The academics

Francisco Cantú. Photo: Beowulf Sheehan The New York Times reports on the case of Curtis Dawkins, a Michigan prisoner who sold a short story collection while serving a life sentence and is now being sued by the state for the cost of his incarceration. The Guardian talks to Francisco Cantú about the border patrol, immigration policy, and how writing can inspire change. “Writing is where I see myself being able to do the most meaningful work,” he said. “I still see it as a tool for exploring all the questions that I still have, about the way that violence

Ailsa Chang To celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Man Booker prize, the organization will award a “Golden” Man Booker prize to one of fifty-one previous winners. 1981 winner Salman Rushdie “is likely a favourite to win,” The Guardian reports, “having already won the Best of Booker award in 2008, to mark the prize’s 40th anniversary, and the Booker of Bookers in 1993, for its 25th birthday.” The shortlist will be revealed in May. NPR has hired two new hosts. Ailsa Chang is joining All Things Considered, while Noel King will work on Morning Edition and the Up First