Every year, Periplus awards 48 mentorships to writers of color living and working in the United States, pairing each one with a member of the collective, an established writer who will meet monthly with their mentee to foster community, support Read more >
Now that we’ve closed the book on 2024, it’s time to assess its cultural products. Let’s start with movies. This week the Golden Globes distributed their brassy trophies, and the SAG awards listed their nominations. It was an exciting year Read more >
I’ve never taken a business school class, but I have to imagine that one of the very first things they teach you is “make sure to not say racist things to your customers,” right after you learn, “this money line Read more >
Today, The DAG Foundation for the Arts, established by musicians Alyssa and Douglas Graham, announces the DAG Prize for Literature, a new annual prize that will award $20,000 to “an early-career prose writer whose work expands the possibilities for American Read more >
A new year is here, a year defined, already, by its uncertainties, by its unmappable contours. So it goes. What is certain, Dear Readers, is that there are new books out today, new things to keep at our side as Read more >
Ah, January 6th. A day that many of us stateside recall for unsavory reasons. But may I present a new cause célèbre? Friends, what if I told you today was not Coup Day, nor Failed Insurrection Day, nor even the Read more >
The first week of 2025(!) brings—what else—more outrage. But today we look to a few good profs. This Sunday, following “a boisterous, hourlong, standing-room-only meeting,” the American Historical Association moved to condemn the ongoing scholasticide in Gaza. Founded in 1884 Read more >
Well, well. 2025, miraculously and mundanely, is here. For many readers in America and the world at large, this January represents the beginning of new cycles in more than one way, including the start of a new political reign in Read more >
Image via The Guardian and AP Drones over New Jersey isn’t the name of a terrible new pop punk band, it’s something that’s really happening in The Kingdom of Springsteen. There isn’t a lot of concrete information or explanation about Read more >
That’s right, reader. A new film is putting a sly spin on the patron saint of emo kids. Even before it made the enduring mold for a certain sort of sad boy—never forget that Dan “Gossip Girl” Humphrey was a Read more >
Today, NYC’s public library systems—The New York Public Library (which serves Manhattan, The Bronx, and Staten Island), Brooklyn Public Library, and Queens Public Library—released their lists of the books New Yorkers checked out of the library the most in 2024. Read more >
The holidays are approaching, and, with them, the end of 2024. As we near December’s various holidays and the start of an unpredictable 2025, observant readers will doubtless see that there haven’t been as many new books to list here Read more >
For the next few months in New York City, book nerds with a penchant for esoterica can enjoy a special treat. The Grolier Club, “America’s oldest and largest society for bibliophiles and enthusiasts in the graphic arts,” is currently hosting Read more >
Press freedom NGO Reporters Without Borders released their 2024 round-up today and found that Israel’s genocidal assault made Palestine the deadliest place in the world to be a journalist this year, which they called “an unprecedented massacre.” RSF report found Read more >
In an example of what the next four years might look like—blue states preemptively protecting the rights and freedoms of their citizens against the authoritarian creep of federal policy—New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy signed into law the “Freedom to Read” Read more >
Joseph Earl Thomas won this year’s Center for Fiction First Novel Prize for his book God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer. Congratulations! The novel has made it onto several best-of-2024 lists, and has been praised as “a powerful examination of every Read more >
The national treasure Nikki Giovanni died yesterday from complications connected to lung cancer. She was 81. A decorated writer of poems, nonfiction, and children’s books, Giovanni was also a star of the Black Arts Movement. She was a devoted activist, Read more >
Image courtesy of UCLA’s website, but since AI-generated art can’t be copyrighted, maybe this acknowledgment doesn’t matter. UCLA announced the other day that “Comp Lit 2BW will be the first course in the UCLA College Division of Humanities to be Read more >
What do hard-boiled eggs, actors, aspirin, and railroad travel all have in common? They all incurred the ire of Raymond Chandler. How do I know this? Because last Friday, Doyle Auctioneers & Appraisers sponsored a sale of “the largest trove Read more >
Today, the Cave Canem Foundation announced the winner of the 2025 Cave Canem Prize: the poet and evolutionary biologist Brandon Kilbourne. Kilbourne will receive a cash prize of $10,000, and his manuscript will be published by Graywolf Press. Formed to Read more >
