Hemingway estate says “No thanks” to Vanity Fair, “Yes” to Harper’s
Rejection doesn’t have to last forever. In the case of Hemingway and Vanity Fair, it only lasted 89 years. When young Ernest submitted “My Life in the Bull Ring with Donald… Read more »
Roxane Gay aims to broaden literary conversation
With the yearly VIDA counts and the general outrage they occasion, it’s easy to talk about the way women are—or aren’t—represented in the literary world. There are always numbers at… Read more »
A Gambler’s Guide to the Nobel Prize 2013: Murakami to Win
For the second year in a row now, Haruki Murakami has emerged as the favorite to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, having been a frontrunner for the past decade. The… Read more »
The New York He-View of Books: Latest issue includes one woman
The London Review of Books and The New York Review of Books must be holding a secret competition, like the “quiet game” my parents encouraged me to play as a kid… Read more »
The Cambridge Companion to Trolls: Mary Beard responds to offensive tweets
Meet Mary Beard, Cambridge classicist and troll slayer. She first found herself battling sexist trolls in January, after appearing on the BBC program Question Time and briefly addressing issues of immigration. When… Read more »
Jane Austen’s face to appear on £10 note
As usual, Jane Austen is everywhere. Her characters appear on stamps and in lakes—and her face will shortly grace the new £10 note, replacing Charles Darwin. The Bank of England announced their… Read more »
Paying for the past: Woody Allen wins Faulkner lawsuit
“It’s going to be damaging to creative people everywhere,” said Lee Caplin, overseer of the Faulkner literary estate. Was he referring to the activities of Amazon? Or the Penguin Random House merger?… Read more »
Shed a tear for Martin Amis!: Author regrets his last name
Like most of us, Martin Amis bears his father’s last name, but unlike most of us, it’s brought him countless literary advantages, subsequent fortune—and grief. In a recent Radio 4… Read more »
Tell me a story, tablet!: The future of reading for fun
You know that thing you did as a kid, where you went to the library, picked up some books with exciting covers, brought them home, and had a parent read… Read more »
Difficult women wanted: The LRB gender imbalance
Novelist Kathryn Heyman and her husband used to play a game called “Guess the Ladies” whenever the London Review of Books showed up in their mailbox. The object? To correctly estimate the… Read more »