Paper Trail

National Book Awards: long lists announced


Poet Monica Youn is on the long list for the National Book Award (photo: Sarah Shatz)

The National Book Award has now released the longlists for its annual awards in nonfiction, poetry, and translated literature. The finalists in all categories will be announced on October 3.

St. Martin’s Press is planning to publish a memoir by Christina Blasey Ford, the psychology professor who, in 2018, testified that Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her at a party in the 1980s. 

Tonight at the PowerHouse Arena in Brooklyn, author Sean Howe will celebrate the release of his new bookAgents of Chaos, which dwells on numerous countercultural threads of 1970s America, particularly at the rise of High Times founder Tom Forçade. Howe will discuss his book with music writer Rob Sheffield. 

USA TODAY and The Tennessean, a member of Gannett’s USA TODAY Network, are planning to hire a full-time “Taylor Swift Reporter.” The job listing was posted earlier this week.

Tricia Romano’s oral history The Freaks Came Out to Write: The Definitive History of the Village Voice, the Radical Paper That Changed American Culture is set for publication in February. For the book Romano conducted more than two hundred interviews with Voice alums including two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, Colson Whitehead, cultural critic Greg Tate, gossip columnist Michael Musto, critic Vivian Gornick, and many others.