At The Undefeated, a list of can’t-miss books from 2020. As Soraya Nadia McDonald writes, it hasn’t been the best year for reading: “This list is, in part, an acknowledgement of the way 2020 wrecked our attention spans with its nonstop ghastliness. As such, it’s filled with selections that perform small miracles.” The picks include Claudia Rankine’s Just Us, James McBride’s Deacon King Kong, and African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle and Song, edited by Kevin Young.
Allegra Hobbs looks at the history of the modern advice column and how the pandemic “seems to have accelerated this need for guidance.” Heather Havrilesky, who writes the Ask Polly column at The Cut, told Hobbs that since the beginning of the pandemic, “the desperation level” of the letters she receives “is much higher.”
The New York Times profiles the Feminist Press, which celebrated its fiftieth anniversary this year. Founded by Florence Howe—who died at the age of ninety-one in September—in 1970, the press now publishes between fifteen and twenty books a year. Executive director and publisher Jamia Wilson told the Times: “When ‘feminist’ was hashtag trending, we thought, ‘Great, but we were feminists before this happened.’ And we will continue to carry this mantle. We want everyone to be able to recognize themselves in a book.”
The winner of the Albertine Prize will be announced this afternoon in a ceremony with Rachel Kushner and François Busnel, followed by a discussion with the winning author and translator.
At the New Yorker, Sasha Frere-Jones writes about anthropologist, poet, and “true ‘Renaissance Man’” Michel Leiris, who died in 1990 and was, “before anything, a tireless witness to lived experience.” Frere-Jones recommends The Ribbon at Olympia’s Throat, in part an observational study of Édouard Manet’s painting Olympia, as the best introduction to Leiris’s “fetishistic attention” and respect for the crucial, “unnecessary detail.”
The Literary Review’s “bad sex in fiction” award has been cancelled. Its organizers explain: “The public had been subjected to too many bad things this year.”
High Country News is seeking applicants to its climate-justice fellowship.