In the Los Angeles Review of Books, Melina Moe reads some of Toni Morrison’s rejection letters to authors from her time as an editor at Random House. Moe writes, “Morrison’s letters are unexpectedly forthcoming. Often, she supplements her rejections with diagnoses of an ailing publishing business, growing frustrations with unimaginative taste, the industry’s aversion to risk-taking, and her own sense of creative constraint working at a commercial press.”
On March 17, n+1 is hosting an event in its Brooklyn office. Ross Perlin will discuss his new book, Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues in New York, with senior editor Charles Petersen. The event is free and open to the public.
On the latest episode of Know Your Enemy, Matthew Sitman and Sam Adler-Bell talk with B. D. McClay about the right wing obsession with Taylor Swift. McClay has been chronicling Taylor Derangement Syndrome on her Substack, Notebook.
In “An Abrupt Break in Thought,” in The Offing magazine, Julia Marquez-Uppman uses punctuation rules from the Chicago Manual of Style to frame meditations on grief.
For LitHub, Maris Kreizman shares book recommendations based on common asks she’s heard over the years. “The best kinds of books are the ones with attributes that are unquantifiable, which is a big reason why people are so much better at recommendations than algorithms are,” Kreizman writes.