For Electric Literature’s “What Comes Next” series, in which debut authors talk about their second book, Isle McElroy talks with Torrey Peters. Peters tells McElroy, “When I thought of writing as a craft, I don’t think I knew what writing was for. I thought if you write something beautiful that is enough. Now, I feel that writing is largely about communicating something urgent to certain people.”
Bookforum is hosting a free online event on September 30th. “Sports Annotated,” will feature Lindsay Zoladz, Miranda Popkey, Ross Gay, and Thomas Beller discussing sports and literature. You can get your free tickets here and read our special section about sports in the summer issue.
In “Nina Totenberg Had a Beautiful Friendship With RBG. Her Book About It Is an Embarrassment,” Michael Schaffer reviews Totenberg’s new memoir, taking the NPR correspondent to task for her close relationships to Supreme Court justices: “Totenberg’s book seems to be cast as a corrective against some national misapprehension that Washington is about nothing but bickering and partisanship. But that misunderstands why so many Americans are down on the capital. Instead, the rage stems from a conviction that the city is full of insiders who are all part of the same contented club, forever scratching one another’s backs.”
The Yale Review is accepting pitches: its full pitch guidelines can be found here.
On the Harper’s Podcast, Charlotte Shane discusses her recent article, “The Right to Not Be Pregnant,” with host Violet Lucca. Shane says that formulating her argument for an abortion as an essential right helped her “reconceptualize the situation so that . . . I had greater insight into what was going on when people go after abortion, when they go after access, and when they go after legality.”