Read Stephen Elliot‘s (Editor of The Rumpus, and author of the memoir The Adderall Diaries) fascinating account of his Lending Library program, whereby, prior to release, he sent a free galley of his memoir to anyone who promised to pass it on to someone else within a week.
A New Buzz-Making Strategy
August: Osage County to Film
Tracy Letts' outstanding play August: Osage County was tapped for a movie adaptation back in 2010, but the project seemed to fall by the wayside shortly after. Then, last week, Bob Weinstein (of The Weinstein Company) announced the adaptation will begin filming this fall. It'll star Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts. You can read an excerpt from the play on our Tumblr.
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Good/Bad Franzen
Get to know the ins and outs of bookstore reading etiquette with this helpful guide (featuring none other than Jonathan Franzen) illustrated by Kate Gavino. Gavino, whose book Last Night's Reading: Illustrated Encounters with Extraordinary Authors is out now, got her start with a wildly successful Tumblr account.
Post-Madeline
To mark the 100th anniversary of Swann’s Way, the Times published a series of blog posts on the legacy of In Search of Lost Time. Among other things, it includes a reflection by New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik.
Whiting Award Recipients 2016
This year’s Whiting Award winners have been announced. The award recognizes “ten emerging writers of fiction, nonfiction, drama, and poetry, and are based on the criteria of early-career achievement and the promise of superior work to come.” The winners include Catherine Lacey (of Nobody Is Ever Missing); Alice Sola Kim (of Mothers, Lock Up Your Daughters Because They Are Terrifying); and Ocean Vuong (of Night Sky with Exit Wounds, among other books).
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Jewel Boxes
Colm Tóibín's new book on Elizabeth Bishop is unusually hard to categorize. Part “primer,” part “personal reflection,” in Jonathan Farmer’s words, it moves back and forth between analysis and lyricism, alternating passages of beauty with nuts-and-bolts guides to Bishop’s poems. In Slate, Farmer tries to nail it down. You could also read our own Michael Bourne’s review of Tóibín's The Master.