Paper Trail

Substack offers $100,000 in grants to writers; Samantha Irby on who she wants to read her book


Samantha Irby. Photo: Eva Blue

Wow, No Thank You author Samantha Irby tells Literary Hub about late night writing, Gone Girl, and who she wants to read her book. “If I am being honest, and completely vulnerable, I would say that I hope that people I used to be friends with, people I was very close to with whom I shared big parts of my life and whose friendships I squandered or fucked up or ruined in some way, I hope that those handful of people have maybe read something I’ve written and seen that I turned out okay,” she said. “Not even in a shitty way, but genuinely in a ‘look at this thing I made, I hope you like it, I miss you!’ kind of way.”

Online newsletter platform Substack is offering $100,000 in grants to writers who have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Grant amounts range from $500 to $5,000 and include “digital mentorship.” Applications will be accepted through April 7.

Simon & Schuster is joining Bookshop.org to help support independent booksellers.

At Literary Hub, Corrine Segal looks at the challenges faced by literary and art organizations during the COVID-19 pandemic. “Arts organizations are always in the difficult position of arguing for their own existence, particularly in a political atmosphere that falsely casts them as the domain of a coastal elite,” she writes. “That case now seems substantially more complicated.”

Digiday reports on the ways entertainment publishers are adjusting to the news cycle.

Watch the first full trailer of Hulu’s adaptation of Sally Rooney’s Normal People. The show will be released on April 29.