Rupi Kaur A new report issued by Arts Council England reveals that sales of books considered to be “literary fiction” have dropped dramatically over the past five years, making it even harder to get by financially as a writer. The report attributes the drop in sales to the recession, smartphones, and the popularity of genre e-books. According to novelist Will Self, himself condiered a literary novelist (his latest book is Phone): “Literary fiction is already being subsidised—think of all of the writers who are continuing to make a living now by teaching creative writing. They represent a change taking

Clarice Lispector New York Times deputy publisher A.G. Sulzberger will take over as publisher of the paper starting next year. He succeeds his father, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., who will serve as chairman of the New York Times Company. The younger Sulzberger, who headed the team that created the paper’s “innovation report” three years ago, said that he doesn’t plan to make any drastic changes in the near future. “I am a unapologetic champion for this institution and its journalistic mission,” he said. “And I’ll continue to be that as publisher.” Gabrielle Bellot reflects on Clarice Lispector’s truth-bending newspaper

Mary Gaitskill On her last day at the paper, New York Times book critic Jennifer Senior reflects on endings and acknowledgement sections in books. Even though they can be “numbingly predictable,” Senior professes her love for these “little Levittowns of gratitude” that expose “how the truth about the wretchedness of book-writing finally comes tumbling out, and the combination of neuroticism and relief, pride and latent terror.”  Univision anchor Jorge Ramos is working on a book. Stranger: The Challenge of a Latino Immigrant in the Trump Era combines Ramos’s “own story of emigrating from Mexico with a critique of Trump’s

Margaret Atwood. Photo: George Whiteside The Guardian’s US website will be edited by Dreamers through this Wednesday. Itzel Guillen, Irving Hernandez, Allyson Durate, and Justino Mora began commissioning essays, commentary, and photography for the project in October, with the hopes of convincing congress to take action on DACA. “These are inspiring, imaginative and resourceful young adults whose lives are currently being disrupted, and potentially destroyed, by politics,” said John Mulholland, acting editor of the Guardian US. “Our project is an attempt to give them a voice and the power to tell their stories.” Sean Spicer is writing a book

Jennifer Szalai Simeon Booker, reporter and Washington bureau chief for Jet and Ebony, died last weekend at 99 years old. Booker “was the first black reporter to work full-time at the Washington Post and, as a writer at Jet, was one of the first journalists to cover Emmett Till’s murder. Jennifer Szalai has been hired as the New York Time’s new nonfiction critic. Szalai is currently an editor at the paper’s Book Review, and will start her new position in January. Tina Turner has sold an autobiography to Atria Books. Tina Turner: My Love Story will cover “everything from

Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor The National Book Critics Circle has announced the finalists for the John Leonard Prize, an award given for the best first book. At the Washington Post, Lisa Kleypas, an author of romance novels, takes issue with Hillary Clinton for her recent comments about the romance-novel industry, in which the politician suggested that men and women learn abusive behaviors from novels about “women being grabbed and thrown on a horse and ridden off into the distance.” “Your comment, especially pulled out of context, doesn’t represent all romance novels,” Kleypas writes. “It’s a misleading cliche about

Anne Garréta In a Twitter thread, A.N. Devers looks at the erasure of former Paris Review editor Brigid Hughes from the history of the magazine. Hughes took over after founder George Plimpton died in 2003, and was let go in 2004. Devers points to New York Times articles about the magazine over the years—including a 2011 profile of Stein that erroneously refers to him as only the second editor after Plimpton—and notes that mentions of her work are regularly removed from the publication’s Wikipedia page. “One of the most amazing things about Brigid Hughes is that she then started

Kal Penn Novelist and essayist William H. Gass, author of The Tunnel and many other works, has died. Kal Penn is publishing an essay collection with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2019. The still-untitled book will include pieces on “his ambition as an actor, the challenges of navigating Hollywood,” and his year-long hiatus from acting while he worked as an associate director in President Obama’s Office of Public Engagement. Actress Sally Field is working on a memoir. Grand Central will publish In Pieces, which Field has been writing for the last five years, next fall. Paris Review editor Lorin Stein

Joy Williams Paul Farhi details the numerous reporting mistakes that ABC’s Brian Ross has made over the years. Erik Wemple explains why suspending Ross is the wrong move for the network: “Suspensions help media companies take the air out of social-media backlash against their mistakes, give the chief screwup artist an anguished exile from the newsroom, and otherwise postpone the reckoning and re-org that the organizations must undertake to avoid the next suspension-worthy gaffe.” Kwame Anthony Appiah will lead the judging panel for the 2018 Man Booker Prize. Joy Williams has won the Paris Review’s Hadada Award. The prize

Sam Shepard. Photo: Brigitte Lacombe The Pulitzer Prizes will no longer limit the Breaking News award to local media. According to a press release by the organization, “breaking news entries will now include coverage related to news events of consequence, whether they are produced by a local, state or national news organization.” Al Tompkins explores why newsrooms are are more susceptible to sexual harassment than other workplaces. PBS is replacing Charlie Rose with rebroadcasts of Christiane Amanpour’s eponymous CNN show. Bill O’Reilly is being sued by one of the women that he settled a sexual harassment claim with. Rachel

Emma Cline. Photo: Megan Cline. Emma Cline’s ex-boyfriend Chaz Reetz-Laiolo has sued the novelist, claiming that Cline plagiarized him in The Girls, her 2015 novel loosely based on the Manson Family. In a countersuit, Cline calls Reetz-Laiolo’s complaint “ludicrous.” Cline’s agent, Bill Clegg, calls the dispute “heartbreaking and enraging.” Geraldo Rivera is apologizing for what he is calling “tawdry” descriptions of his relationships with women that appear in his 1991 memoir, Exposing Myself.  Rizzoli books has announced that it’s launching a new imprint. Oregon Live revisits the early career of the late cult novelist Katherine Dunn. The 92nd Street

Porochista Khakpour Porochista Khakpour explains how she and her team at Harper Perennial came up with the cover for her upcoming memoir, Sick. Khakpour says her newest work was also the hardest to chose a cover for: “Do you do some play on Lyme? (At one point a lime green cover was an option to which I yelped, please no!) Hospital paraphernalia? Meds? Doctors?” In the end, she and her team chose one of the many selfies Khakpour had taken while hospitalized, something she had done regularly to keep track of her health and stave off boredom. “I was

Daniel Alarcón Wired will switch to a metered paywall early next year. “The simple reason that we’re going to a paywall model is that I think it’s going to make money, and I’d like us to make more money,” editor in chief Nick Thompson explained. “The deeper reason we’re going to a paywall model is because you need to hedge against the future.” Syfy is developing a TV series based on George R. R. Martin’s 1980 novella, Nightflyers. The network has ordered ten episodes of the series, which may air as early as next summer. Elena Ferrante’s publishers say

Dodai Stewart Amazon’s publishing company is launching a new imprint. Amazon Original Stories will focus on books of both fiction and nonfiction “that can be read in a single sitting” by authors like Joyce Carol Oates, Dodai Stewart, Eddie Huang, W. Kamau Bell, and more. NPR announced that executive editor Edith Chapin will take over the duties of news editor David Sweeney, who left the company yesterday after three women filed sexual harassment complaints against him. Margaret Sullivan explores how attacks on the media—like the sting operation by Project Veritas against the Washington Post—could end up increasing trust in

Keith Olbermann Better Homes and Gardens publisher Meredith Corporation has bought Time Inc. with a “passive financial investment” from the Koch brothers. Politico talks to skeptics of the brothers’ claims that they won’t be involved in the company or use their newly-acquired publications to spread their conservative agenda. “They could influence coverage without lifting a finger, basically,” said Koch biographer Daniel Schulman. “If the staff of these publications are aware that the Kochs are significant financial backers of Time Inc, they may not go out of their way to be critical of the brothers or the company.” Keith Olbermann

Abubakar Adam Ibrahim In a study published in the journal Scientific Study of Literature, two English professors, Chris Gavaler and Dan Johnson, seek to prove that readers approach science fiction more “stupidly.” The New York Times profiles a new generation of Nigerian writers, including Abubakar Adam Ibrahim, author of the award-winning novel Season of Crimson Blossoms. “A new wave of thematically and stylistically diverse fiction is emerging from the country,” writes Alexandra Alter, “as writers there experiment with different genres and explore controversial subjects like violence against women, polygamy and the rise of the Islamist militant group Boko Haram.”

Corey Robin The New York Times 100 notable books of the year list has been published. Time magazine and Publishers Weekly have also announced their picks for best books of 2017. The Los Angeles Times Guild (a unionizing effort at the paper) has published an op-ed saying that their parent company, Tronc, has plenty of money to fund the benefits and raises that the union is pursuing. The Guild dug into Tronc’s finances, singling out the high salary of CEO Justin Dearborn and other top brass, the cost of one executive’s private jet, and the excessive amount of money

Errin Haines Whack Anthony Scaramucci has been shopping around a book proposal about his torrid ten days in the White House. The Mooch now says he won’t go through with writing the proposed volume, because publishers are only interested in a tell-all, something a “facts guy” and true “team player” like himself just won’t do. However, the proposal, obtained by Business Insider, seemed to promise dirt: “With a sense of nothing to lose, Scaramucci will take you exclusively behind the scenes in his first tell-all book. . . . Scaramucci was under an intense spotlight in those final days,

Liz Phair Liz Phair, the musician who brought us the indie-rock classic Exile in Guyville, has signed a two-book deal with Random House. The first book, a memoir titled Horror Stories, will apparently detail her “experiences with fame, heartbreak, motherhood, and everything in between.” Garth Risk Hallberg, the author of City on Fire and a self-identified “unreconstructed geek,” explains how and why he updated his debut novella, A Guide to the North American Family, which is being released in a new edition by Knopf. The Meredith Corporation is currently in discussions over the purchase of Time Inc—the publisher that

Radhika Jones Anonymous staffers at Vanity Fair and Condé Nast are worried about incoming editor Radhika Jones’s plans for the magazine and its employees. According to the Daily Beast’s Lloyd Grove, some worry that Jones’s arrival will be accompanied by layoffs and budget cuts, while others wonder how she’ll handle “the gossip-driven Condé Nast corporate culture” as she works to make the magazine more relevant in the digital age. “If you fail everybody will know it,” one unnamed editor said. “It’s not like you’re failing at some obscure web site in Seattle. This is like the Yankees.” David France’s