Patti Smith helps out Portland bookshop following burglary
A couple of weeks ago we brought you news that The Petersfield Bookshop in, er, Petersfield, UK, had been given a much-needed sales boost with a little help from Neil… Read more »
Two members resign from committee established to reform Nobel prize for literature
Two people have resigned from a committee that was established to oversee reforms to the Swedish Academy’s Nobel prize for literature. This puts the net resignation count for any committees… Read more »
Nobel prize for literature once again descends into controversy
After a year with no Nobel prize in literature (read about the Swedish Academy’s sexual abuse and financial misconduct scandal here), expectations were high. Two awards would be given: one… Read more »
The PEN America Literary Awards shortlist has been announced! Here’s a totally unbiased look at it—especially the biography category
It’s that time of year again: time for book nerds to ululate up to the heavens in praiseful happiness, for—yea, verily—the 2019 PEN America Literary Awards finalists have been announced. [There’s… Read more »
Jennifer Egan has been named the president of PEN America
As we wrote earlier this year, this month sees the unification of the two discrete branches that have long represented PEN International in America, as PEN America absorbs its smaller, west-coast cousin, the PEN… Read more »
Five Takeaways from the PEN America Literary Awards
Last night, the soon-to-be-consolidated PEN America convened at NYU’s Skirball Center to celebrate writers at its annual PEN America Literary Awards. The organization’s website explains: “Since 1963, the PEN America Literary Awards… Read more »
The New York Times and the Case of the Disappearing Labor Poet
Last week, readers of the New York Times may have been excited to catch some very excellent literary news, in a report by Aimee Lee Ball titled “The Real Nanny Diaries.” The… Read more »
New York prisons are severely limiting prisoners’ access to books
Earlier this week, we wrote about a policy that banned inmates in at least two New Jersey prisons from reading Michelle Alexander’s book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in… Read more »
America’s PEN branches are coming together like Voltron
If it weren’t true, it would read like something out of satire. PEN International, if you don’t know it, is a century-old global organization that fights censorship and connects writers the world… Read more »
Cameroonian writer Patrice Nganang, jailed for dissident speech, has been released from custody and returned to the United States
Novelist and writer Patrice Nganang, who was detained by the Cameroonian government in early December, has been released from custody and deported to the United States, according to Joel Kouam,… Read more »