The Women’s Prize for Fiction shortlist was announced yesterday. The finalists are Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other, Hilary Mantel’s The Mirror and the Light, Jenny Offill’s Weather, Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet, Natalie Haynes’s A Thousand Ships, and Angie Cruz’s Dominicana. The winner will be announced in September.
Longtime Random House editor Robert Loomis died earlier this week at the age of 93.
Small Press Distribution has started a GoFundMe campaign to make up for lost revenue during the COVID-19 pandemic. “Although it’s true that books can’t help materially, we believe that reading can expand the horizons of our imagination; help us consider the world we want to live in after the pandemic is over, and how we are going to work for it,” wrote fund organizer Trisha Low about the importance of SPD’s work. “We want to get our community the books from which we can learn the most – those from underrepresented writers, queer and of color, activists and artists – and we want to do so as ethically as possible.”
Maven has recognized the Sports Illustrated union.
The New York Times’s Dwight Garner lists the authors and books that have helped him learn how to love doing nothing.
How can the journalism industry regroup after the COVID-19 pandemic? At PressThink, Jay Rosen recommends adjusting coronavirus coverage now by working together instead of publishing different versions of the same stories and prioritizing “enlarging public understanding” over daily content creation. Frederic Filloux thinks that small, staff-owned digital outlets will replace bloated print publications. Substack cofounder Hamish McKenzie envisions a future where Substack hosts niche publications with flexible paywalls that work together and share resources. “Yep, pretty obvious I would say this. But Substack is what I know, and I know it works,” he explains.