Watching your book be adapted into a film can be a challenge for an author. At Vulture, John Green discusses his involvement in The Fault in Our Stars adaptation, which he has nothing but positive things to say about. “It was a joke on the movie that I cried every day. But I cried every day because they were good every day!” The film’s full trailer was released this week, and in case you still haven’t read the novel, here’s our review.
Crying with John Green
David Fincher to Join the Gone Girl Team
David Fincher, who helmed the American cinematic adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, may join the team working on the film for Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl. Flynn herself penned the first draft of the screenplay. As you wait (im)patiently for the project to get underway, you can take our own Michael Bourne’s advice and treat yourself to Flynn’s earlier books.
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Sofi Thanhauser’s Sweeping History of Getting Dressed
Sofi Thanhauser's Worn is a wide-ranging exploration of clothing, and how it impacts our daily lives and the planet.
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A Home at the End of the World
“I’m not paranoid, I’m really not.” The Washington Post has a profile of the so-called American Redoubt, an area of the Pacific Northwest populated by doomsday preppers. Pair with our own Emily St. John Mandel‘s reading list of five can’t-miss apocalyptic narratives.
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Decolonizing Our Shelves
“… Stop talking about diversity and start decolonizing our shelves.”At the Winter Institute 2018 (Wi13), keynote speaker Junot Diaz lambasted the publishing industry for talking — but doing little else — about diversity in literature, and implored librarians and booksellers to fill their shelves with diverse books. From our archives: an essay on race, gender, and Diaz’s writing.
The World’s Most Powerful Editor
“I think you are abusing your power, and I find it hard to believe that you have thought it through thoroughly.” Norway’s largest newspaper, Aftenposten, has published a front-page letter to Mark Zuckerberg after Facebook censored an iconic image from the Vietnam war. The Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of a naked nine-year-old Kim Phúc running away from a napalm attack was deleted from a post about seven images “that changed the history of warfare.”
Tatjana Soli, author of The Lotus Eaters, wrote for us about the legacy of that infamous photo a few years back.
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Fiction Changing History
In an article for Vanity Fair, Meredith Turtis argues that “perhaps fiction… can change the place women have in history,” by giving forgotten figures new lives as characters with fascinating stories to tell. She cites Paula McClain‘s just-released Circling the Sun, about a trailblazing female aviator, and Megan Mayhew Bergman‘s Almost Famous Women, which could have been included based on the title alone. Her argument pairs well with our own Hannah Gersen‘s review of Jami Attenberg‘s Saint Mazie, a novel that fictionalizes the life and voice of a very real “Bowery celebrity.”
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Anthology of African LGBT Writing
Poet Abayomi Animashaun has issued a call for “poems by gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender individuals living in Africa and in the Diaspora.” Submissions “of high merit” will be considered for a forthcoming anthology.
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