On the New York Review of Books website, Willa Glickman interviews writer and philosopher FT. FT, aka Fuck Theory, is an anonymous author who publishes essays on his Patreon as well as writes for the NYR online, 4Columns, and Bookforum, among other publications. FT told Glickman: “I think I’m in an extremely fortunate and indeed somewhat archaic position for an intellectual without independent wealth, and I’m very grateful for it. I’m often broke but my mind lives a positively decadent lifestyle.”
Author Michelle Tea is launching her own press, Dopamine Books. “We want to nurture emerging queer writers who might find themselves intimidated by the publishing landscape,” Tea told Publisher’s Weekly, “as well as grow to where we can be competitive in landing more established authors I love.” She plans to publish four books a year. Dopamine Books will be distributed, along with Semiotext(e), by MIT Press.
Eileen Myles will read new work at the Parkside Lounge this Sunday at 5pm.
At the Washington Post, Katherine A. Powers weighs in on how AI is starting to affect audiobooks, and how tech companies are creating computer-generated versions of professional readers. “‘Mary,’ for instance, a voice created by the engineers at Google, is a generic female; there’s also ‘Archie,’ who sounds British, and ‘Santiago,’ who speaks Spanish, and 40-plus other personas who want to read to you. Apple Books uses the voices of five anonymous professional narrators in what will no doubt be a growing stable.”
Graywolf Press has signed Jenny Boully for a two-book deal: Close Cover, Strike Gently, which will be released in 2025, is a collection of autobiographical essays; Parallax, due out in 2027, is a “lyric memoir on reverence, loss, calamity, and hybrid identity, beginning with the author’s own near-death experience and ending with the scattering of her sister’s cremains, and encountering ghosts, sea monkeys, abandoned kittens, and a flying trapeze along the way.”