PEN America is hosting a reading in solidarity with Salman Rushdie on Friday morning at the New York Public Library. Reginald Dwayne Betts, Hari Kunzru, Gay Talese, Colum McCann and more will read from Rushdie’s body of work.
The New Yorker’s Katy Waldman reflects on how top executives testifying in the Penguin Random House antitrust trial have presented their industry: “Despite their aura of idealistic adventure, publishing executives have shown themselves to be fiercely risk-averse. In a capricious market, they’ve leaned on hundred-year-old inventory instead of nourishing the books that might become tomorrow’s backlist. They’ve touted proven formulae—marquee names and their imitators—at the expense of experimental talents.”
At The Guardian, Sarah Shaffi writes about the state of literary festivals, some of which have returned to programming since the beginning of the pandemic, and how their tactics and demographics may change in the future.
The new issue of n+1 is online now. Read Dayna Tortorici on the criminalization of abortion, Nicholás Medina Mora on Meixican author Heriberto Yépez, Lisa Borst on Lisa Carver and DIY publishing, fiction by Mark Doten and Vladimir Sorokin, and more in Issue 43: Unreal.
Annabel Graham interviews Tess Gunty about her her debut novel, The Rabbit Hutch, for BOMB. On channeling different characters, Gunty says: “They arrived almost like punchlines missing their jokes—what if there was a man who covered himself in glow stick fluid and scared his enemies? What if there were three boys who took to animal sacrifice? Then the job ahead was to make these extreme behaviors not only believable, but inevitable for these characters.”
The 2022 small press flea is this Saturday at the Brooklyn Public Library.