Forty years ago in October 1986 I attended my first Frankfurt Book Fair. On the first day of meetings my friend and colleague Gary Fisketjon and I were introduced to Heinrich Maria Ledig Rowohlt, an elegant, charismatic 78-year-old German publisher

Extra, extra. You’ve seen the headlines. Men—particularly straight men—have stopped reading fiction. This year saw the rise and fall of the performative lit-bro. And though history, crime, and self-help books still persuade a certain type, the most recent NEA survey found

Cuando Whitney Houston apareció en The Arsenio Hall Show en las primeras semanas de 1991, la otra invitada de Arsenio fue Roseanne Barr, quien había cantado notoriamente “The Star-Spangled Banner” en un juego de los Padres de San Diego el año anterior. El anfitrión le preguntó a Barr si

En septiembre de 1942, el bibliotecario jefe del ejército, Ray Trautman, se encontraba en el último tramo de una gira mundial por las instalaciones estadounidenses cuando llegó a Australia. Aquí, su misión era doble: tomar la temperatura de las necesidades de lectura en este rincón

La tierra natal de Hannah Arendt estaba poblada de amigos, la mayoría de ellos hombres; al menos eso es lo que su correspondencia publicada nos haría creer. Las cartas publicadas entre Arendt y sus amigos incluyen libros de Martin Heidegger, Karl Jaspers, Heinrich Blücher,

¡Hola de nuevo! Bienvenido de nuevo al rincón más elegante (y más borracho) de Internet, hogar de la querida y atrevida sensación conocida como ¿Soy el gilipollas literario? Si es la primera vez que lees, somos una columna de consejos bimensual que aborda

Hoy, la Academia Sueca otorgó el Premio Nobel de Literatura 2026 a la autora canadiense Anne Carson, por “su obra audaz e inventiva que, en un diálogo lúdico con la tradición clásica, ha creado nuevas formas para la literatura contemporánea”. La Academia permanente

No solemos entender la literatura como un diálogo. Normalmente, cuando los profesionales editoriales piensan en los lectores, piensan que necesitan incitarlos a comprar el libro para que puedan tener horas de entretenimiento cultural placentero o enriquecedor. El nombre del autor

Llegué a la mayoría de edad como escritor leyendo The Way to Rainy Mountain, House Made of Dawn y Angle of Geese de N. Scott Momaday (su creativa memoria, novela y colección de poemas de no ficción). Momaday, como Louise Erdrich, Leslie Silko, Joy

Award-winning fiction writer T. Geronimo Johnson joins co-hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell to talk about his new novel, The Occidental Book of the Dead. He discusses how the book addresses white supremacy and the United States’ deep-seated and racist

Tonight, at a ceremony in New York City, Kirkus Reviews announced the winners of the 13th annual Kirkus Prize, which awards $50,000 to “books of exceptional merit” in three categories: Fiction, Nonfiction, and Young Readers’ Literature. The winners were chosen

In a new People Interview, Michael Douglas gets real about writing about his past relationships in his new memoir, One Helluva Ride, including the one where there were "acts of indiscretion" on both their parts.

How to build a reading habit when you hate reading: diagnose if your problem is selection or friction, pick books by mood, not should-read lists, engineer quick wins with short books, give yourself permission to quit, use audiobooks as a bridge, and track daily streaks instead of yearly counts.

Photographing notes is not digitising them. This guide shows how to use your phone's built-in text recognition to turn handwriting into searchable, editable text on iPhone and Android, with no extra app and no upload.

Flash fiction is not a shortened long story. It is a different form built on one character, one problem, and one moment. This guide covers structure, titles, endings, and the editing process that makes a 500-word story work.

Natural dialogue is not a transcript of real speech — it is real speech edited for character, tension, and subtext. These techniques will help your characters sound like people instead of mouthpieces.

A clear structure keeps a true story moving. This guide shows a simple framework for shaping scenes, reflection, and research into an essay that holds together.

Showing means giving readers evidence instead of labels. These five short exercises train you to replace emotion words with action, detail, and dialogue.

A reading journal only helps if you still use it in March. This guide sets up a low-effort system for tracking books, quotes, and ideas worth returning to.

A memoir opening must earn the reader's attention in the first page. This guide shows how to choose a scene, enter it late, and set up the question the book answers.

Character voice is more than accent or slang. This guide shows how sentence length, vocabulary, and what a character notices can make a voice unmistakable.

Revision feels overwhelming when you try to fix everything at once. This guide breaks it into passes: structure, scenes, sentences, and a final read-aloud check.

Sensory detail works when it reveals character or changes a scene. This guide shows how to choose details that mean something instead of listing all five senses.