Novelist Ursula K. Le Guin has died at the age of 88. Over the course of her career, Le Guin wrote over twenty novels, as well as numerous collections of poetry, short stories, and essays.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has announced the editors of the 2018 Best American Series. Roxane Gay will work on the short story edition, Cheryl Strayed will take on travel writing, and Hilton Als will edit the essays. Ruth Reichl will oversee the series’s inaugural collection of food writing.
A collection of Sylvia Plath’s belongings, including a typewritten copy of The Bell Jar, is being put up for auction by her daughter, Frieda Hughes.
Infowars’s Alex Jones is working on a book with The Game author Neil Strauss. CNN’s Oliver Darcy reports that the pair have been shopping around a proposal for The Secret History of the Modern World & the War for the Future. “It’s not clear whether any publishers will actually want to acquire the book,” Darcy notes, “as any company that would choose to publish the book would likely face an immense backlash because of the number of inflammatory claims and comments Jones has made over the years.”
Inspired by Elena Ferrante’s new column for The Guardian, Literary Hub’s Emily Temple comes up with a list of authors she wishes would become columnists. Maggie Nelson is “bursting with thought and radical feeling, so she’d have no trouble delighting each week,” while Claudia Rankine, Temple writes, “doesn’t take any shit, which is one of my favorite qualities in columnists, and people in general.”