Seven hundred years after the poet’s death, many believe he should be exonerated of the crimes for which he was exiled from Florence. Was he the victim of a conspiracy? Read more
Month: June 2021
Minnesota writer Louise Erdrich wins Pulitzer for her novel ‘The Night Watchman’
Minnesota writer Louise Erdrich won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction Friday for her novel “The Night Watchman,” a glowing and multilayered novel based on the life of her grandfather, Aunishenaubay Patrick Gourneau. Read more
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Reading Books About… People Reading Books?
…the best biblio-memoirs are a wonderfully quirky mix of autobiography, travel writing, literary criticism, self-help and immersion journalism. The list that follows includes books which push the genre boundaries, which explore and explode the form. So often books stay in our head precisely because we do not know exactly what they are. Read more
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Oxford University Press to end centuries of tradition by closing its printing arm
Oxford University’s right to print books was first recognised in 1586, in a decree from the Star Chamber. But the centuries-old printing history of Oxford University Press will end this summer, after the publishing house announced the last vestige of its printing arm was closing. Read more
2021 Lambda Literary Award Winners Announced
Lambda Literary announced the winners of the 33rd Annual Lambda Literary Awards, known as the “Lammys,” on June 1 at a ceremony hosted by Rakesh Satyal, who won a Lambda Literary Award for his debut novel, Blue Boy. Read more
Black Barbecue Gets Its Due in an Inspiring New Cookbook
The first book from renowned pitmaster and chef Rodney Scott puts a long-neglected keystone of Black American culture on the table. Read more
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Look Inside Philip Roth’s Personal Library
The author of “Goodbye, Columbus” and “The Human Stain” left several thousand books, many of them with notes or letters, to the Newark Public Library. The collection will soon open to the public. Read more
Zimbabwean novelist Tsitsi Dangarembga wins PEN Pinter prize
The prize is given by free speech campaigners English PEN in memory of the Nobel laureate Harold Pinter. It goes to a writer of “outstanding literary merit” who, as Pinter put it in his Nobel speech, shows a “fierce intellectual determination … to define the real truth of our lives and our societies”. Previous winners include Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Margaret Atwood and Linton Kwesi Johnson. Read more
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How Lin-Manuel Miranda and Friends Made an Old Bookstore New
The century-old Drama Book Shop in Manhattan struggled for years. Then “Hamilton” happened. Read more
Hobby Lobby Sues Oxford Professor Over Stolen Bible Artifacts
Craft chain Hobby Lobby is going to court again, this time to recover some $7 million it paid a former Oxford University classics professor for ancient fragments of the Christian gospels and other artifacts that turned out to be stolen. Read more