Samantha Harvey’s novel Orbital, about six astronauts on the International Space Station, is the winner of this year’s Booker Prize.
At the Columbia Journalism Review, Joel Simon argues that journalists covering Trump’s second term may benefit from taking an approach akin to that of a foreign correspondent. Simon talked with Suzy Hansen, whose book Notes on a Foreign Country is about her experience covering Turkey, “if anything she described in her book could be applied to the current reality in the United States.” “If you are feeling self-congratulatory in any way, when you’re going into trying to understand something, you have a problem,” Hansen said. “You have to keep pushing deeper and deeper and deeper into understanding while remaining open-minded to the possibilities.”
Bookforum contributor Ava Kofman is joining the New Yorker as a staff writer. Daniel Immerwahr has been named a contributing writer.
Saidiya Hartman interviews Dionne Brand, the author most recently of Salvage: Readings from the Wreck, in the current issue of BOMB. “There can be so much dishonesty when we put pen to paper, too, because of the awareness of the narrative regime and ruling ideas of the present. It’s beside those ruling ideas that you start to pen a paragraph. So how do you plan the paragraph honestly? Can I make a model of how I move in the world with how I make words in the world?”
Tomorrow night in New York City, The Baffler is hosting a free panel discussion between Erik Baker, Lilah Burke, and Chenjerai Kumanyika on the future of American higher education.
The New York Public Library is hosting a one-night-only happy hour event on December 13, featuring a special display on James Baldwin’s early career. Writers Phoebe Robinson, Darryl Pinckney, Tayari Jones, Daphne Brooks will read from Baldwin’s work.