The Nobel Prize began in 1901, and 120 years — and several hundred thousand movies — later, no writer whose primary work is for the screen has been awarded the top literary prize on Earth. Read more
Author: GR
How Oscar Wilde evolved from poet and playwright to symbol of martyrdom and individualism
Oscar Wilde’s birthday is Oct. 16 — he was born on that day in 1854 — and there’s a simple way to both celebrate it and give yourself a present: Pick up a copy of “Oscar Wilde: A Life,” by Matthew Sturgis, an authority on the 1890s whose previous works focused on the artists Walter Sickert and Aubrey Beardsley. Without supplanting Richard Ellmann’s beautifully written “Oscar Wilde” — which a young reviewer bearing my name enthusiastically reviewed in 1988 — Sturgis’s biography is now the fullest one-volume account of the iconic fin-de-siècle writer, aesthete, wit and gay martyr. Read more
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Three Men Win Million-Euro Literary Prize Having Posed as Female Author
Speculation on the identity of one of Spain’s most prominent crime thriller writers, who wrote under the name Carmen Mola, ended on Friday when three men rose to accept the 2021 Premio Planeta literary prize — worth one million-euros — for Mola’s currently unreleased work “The Beast.” Read more
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The Greenwich Village Townhouse That E. B. White Called Home
The 4,256-square-foot house has four bedrooms, five full bathrooms and one partial bathroom. Amenities include five original fireplaces, a rear garden, a front yard, a roof deck and multiple terraces. Price: $10.5 million. Read more
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Hanif Abdurraqib wins the Gordon Burn prize for A Little Devil in America
Abdurraqib’s book is a meditation on Black performance in the modern age, moving from Beyoncé’s Super Bowl half-time show to Aretha Franklin’s funeral. It is inspired by Josephine Baker’s words: “I was a devil in other countries, and I was a little devil in America, too.” It topped a six-strong shortlist featuring titles including Jenni Fagan’s Luckenbooth and Salena Godden’s Mrs Death Misses Death, to win the prize, which celebrates “literature that is fearless in both ambition and execution”, in honour of the late writer Gordon Burn. Read more
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Timuel Black, historian, civil rights activist, dies at 102
Mr. Black, a political and civil rights activist, educator, historian, prolific author and revered elder statesman and griot of Chicago’s Black community, died Wednesday. Read more
Sally Rooney Declines to Sell Translation Rights to Israeli Publisher
The Irish novelist Sally Rooney said on Tuesday that she would not allow the Israeli publishing house that handled her previous novels to publish her most recent book, “Beautiful World, Where Are You,” because of her support for Palestinian people and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. Read more
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I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness by Claire Vaye Watkins
In the spirit of Edward Abbey, Hunter Thompson, and Joy Williams, Watkins has forged a desert tale of howling pain and a chaotic quest for healing mythic in its summoning of female power in a realm of double-wides, loaded dice, broken glass, and hot springs. Read more
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Sue Grafton’s Alphabet Novels to Be Adapted for Television
A TV adaptation of the late Sue Grafton’s million-selling Kinsey Millhone mystery novels, a prospect the author once swore she would return from the dead to prevent, is now in the works. Read more
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Philadelphia poet Sonia Sanchez has won the Gish Prize
The poet, educator, and activist was selected for the $250,000 cash award “in recognition of her ongoing achievements in inspiring change through the power of the word.” Read more
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