This week! Books! We had a peaceful and inspiring inauguration day, and 22-year-old Youth Poet Laurette Amanda Gorman was a breakout star with her incredible poem “The Hill We Climb.” Penguin Random House is rushing to publish a hardcover edition the poem, which is already available for pre-sale. Speaking of politics, Ibram X. Kendi published […]
Jessica Faust
S&S cancels Josh Hawley’s book deal (This week in books)
This week! Books! This week has been a heck of a decade. I don’t really know what to say about the incredibly distressing events of this week that others haven’t said more forcefully and eloquently, so I’m just going to move on to the books links. One consequence of the insurrection at the Capitol this […]
The problem with Maxwell Perkins (This week in books)
This week! Books! We’re all counting down to the end of this godforsaken year, and I just want to take a quick moment to say that I hope you’re staying safe and healthy, wearing your masks, and making those painful but necessary choices around the holidays. We just need to hang in there for a […]
National book award winners! (This week in books)
This week! Books! It was a big week in the book world! Congrats to the National Book Award winners! Fiction: Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu Nonfiction: The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X by Tamara Payne and Les Payne Poetry: DMZ Colony by Don Mee Choi Translated literature: Tokyo Ueno Station by Yu […]
Is it OK to resend a query? (This week in books)
This week! Books! President Barack Obama’s memoir A Promised Land arrives next Tuesday, which is going to have massive reverberations in the bookselling world, not least of which because it clocks in at a hefty $45 list price. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie reviewed it for the New York Times, and Smithsonian Magazine looks at where it […]
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt up for sale (This week in books)
This week! Books! Yes, it’s a Saturday edition of TWIB but, like, what is time? Will every day be election day in the future? Who can say?? On to the links! Bestselling YA author Justina Ireland is offering a series of really fantastic writing advice dispatches in her newsletter, I highly recommend subscribing! It appears […]