Brilliant badass Alice Munro has won the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature, the Nobel Committee announced today. The 82-year-old Canadian short story virtuoso was incredibly Canadian about the honor, remarking that she hopes her win will draw attention to other talented Canadian writers. Classier than Lena Horne serving…
My favorite thing about The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons wasn't the stories, but how author Dan Brown's physical description of his protagonist Robert Langdon exactly matched the way Dan Brown looked in his author photo (down to the outfit), which makes me think that both novels were actually just extensive works…
After recently opting to read part of Paradise Lost instead of her own (relatively) brand-new novel, See Now Then, at PEN’s World Voices Festival of International Literature, Jamaica Kincaid talked to The American Reader about her career, as in, how it has been so awesome that she can get up onstage and read a little…
Well, this is depressing: female authors are still using male pseudonyms — or ambiguous initials in hopes that prospective buyers won't realize they're ladies — because studies show more people read books written by dudes. Can you blame them?
We receive a near-constant stream public relations material, most it ignorable, some of it pertinent, and an even smaller percentage of it, on rare and delightful occasions, so goofily irrelevant that it's worth sharing. Like this: Men Don't Pee Straight: And Other Things You Should Know About Us, which is a book that…
In a recent NPR interview with David Greene, author Jennifer Weiner — whose bestselling fiction has often been derided by literary critics as "chick lit" — talked about her latest novel, the dearth of women in Hollywood writers' rooms, and her ongoing feud with the New York Times, which hasn't been very kind to Weiner's…
Finally shedding the yoke of female dominance of the literary arts, the oft-ignored and long oppressed minority group known as "men" will finally have things to read made just for them. Starting in June, Esquire magazine will begin publishing a series of e-books called "Fiction for Men," finally giving voice to the silent…
Today in depressing housing-market news, YA author Francesca Lia Block could lose her home because the bank won't return her calls. The author of the Weetzie Bat books is underwater on her mortgage due to the recession. To make things more complicated, the mortgage is in her mom's name, and her mom is now dead. To…
Holiday gift alert for any of your literary-minded friends! Flavorwire happened upon an Etsy shop called Uneek Doll Designs that sells handcrafted dolls of famous authors. My favorites, above, are Sylvia Plath, Maya Angelou, and Judy Blume. Can you imagine if people gave these dolls — along with the books of by said…
A new book by Shel Silverstein has been released posthumously called Every Thing On It and is in book stores today! The book, containing 145 poems, was created though the efforts of editor Toni Markiet and the family of the deceased poet, in hopes of staying true to Silverstein's aesthetic and keeping it authentic.
The world has lost a wonderful crazy cat lady. Lilian Jackson Braun's series of mystery novels included titles like The Cat Who Could Read Backwards, The Cat Who Had 60 Whiskers, The Cat Who Played Brahms, The Cat Who Knew Shakespeare, The Cat Who Sniffed Glue, and, of course, The Cat Who Smelled a Rat.
On last night's Tonight Show, while sitting next to (a silent) Ron Howard, Snooki discussed her new novel—A Shore Thing, out today—as well as her new Jersey Shore roommate Deena, who shows her vagina on the first episode.
For the first time since July 2007, Stephenie Meyer is missing from the top 50 on USA Today's Best-Selling Books list. The top 10 books are by men: Stieg Larsson, Jonathan Franzen, Nicholas Sparks, and, of course, Jon Stewart.
Check out this interview with the wonderful British writer A.S. Byatt, in which she ruminates on God, Twitter, women writers and why the children of children's book authors are prone to suicide.
A: Because he was being chased by Nazis. A new exhibit reveals that H.A. and Margret Rey, the creators of the beloved monkey (originally named Fifi), modeled his narrow escapes from danger after their own experiences fleeing Europe. [CBS]
Last night, like probably half the reading world, I re-read Catcher in the Rye. It was my old school edition, the burgundy paperback with yellow writing we all had, filled with earnest 12-year-old annotations:
"[Tillie] Olsen's tales show the shortchanged lives of gifted women from the working poor: unable to at once make a living, make art, and meet the needs of their families." [CSM, Image via TillieOlsen.net]
According to the Guardian, Le Guin resigned from the Author's Guild for cutting a "deal with the devil," and yielding to Google's desire for digitization of written materials without taking copyright (and author's rights) seriously. [The Guardian, Image via UrsulaKLeGuin.com]
Sad news: Norma Fox Mazer, the author of several critically acclaimed books for children and young adults, including When She Was Good, Silver, and Newbery Honor Book After The Rain, has died at the age of 78. [PublishersWeekly]
Two women — Bonnie Jo Campbell, author of American Salvage, and Jayne Ann Phillips, who wrote Lark and Termite — are finalists for the National Book Award in Fiction. Across all categories, nine of the twenty finalists are female. [Mediabistro]
Karla Kuskin, the author of more than 50 books for children, including many books of verse and the classic The Philharmonic Gets Dressed, has died at 77. [NYT]
"I have no hidden marriages. They just sort of escape my mind." - Katherine Anne Porter [New Yorker]
Of all the many inexplicable things on our little blue marble, these "pilgrimages" where people harass J.D. Salinger is one of the weirdest.
