For Columbia Journalism Review, Haley Mlotek considers a new biography of Anna Wintour, and speaks with its author, Amy Odell. Anna: The Biography is a deeply-researched unauthorized account of theVogue editor’s decades-long reign of the fashion world. Mlotek writes, “By a few measures, she may be considered the ‘final’ boss. Yet as her influence has grown, so has the imperative for substantial critique and for reckoning with what her power means.”
The Washington Monthly magazine has announced the finalists of its Kukula Award for Excellence in Nonfiction Book Reviewing. Among the ten finalists are Becca Rothfeld for her Boston Review essay on three books about sexual ethics, Zoe Hu for her Jewish Currents review of Jay Caspian Kang’s The Lonliest Americans, Deborah Friedell for her London Review of Books review of Robert Kolker’s Hidden Valley Road, and Andre Ricardo Diniz Pagliarini for his New Republic review of Nuclear Folly.
At Vulture, seventeen books to look forward to this summer, including new titles by Akwaeke Emezi, Ottessa Moshfegh, Emmanuel Carrère, and more.
Next week, Words Without Borders will launch a new website, with new writing published daily, collections of new translated literature, and a searchable archive.
For Gawker, Erin Somers recommends that MFA programs, residencies, and fellowships do away with the application requirement of submitting letters of recommendation. The practice of requiring letters began with Ivy League anti-Semitism in the 1920s, and Somers argues that its continued purpose today is discriminatory: “For a writer to know someone they can ask for a reference, especially one that might move the needle, means they have already been admitted to an exclusive institution, or more likely, several.”