
This Week in Literature
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Hoo boy. I sat down to write a different post altogether, but between adaptation news, bookish Twitter, and the latest literary grifter, I couldn’t concentrate. So here’s a little roundup for you instead.
Adaptation News
Angie Thomas’s sophomore novel, the followup to The Hate U Give (which has been a number 1 New York Times Bestseller for 100 weeks), On The Come Up, was released on Tuesday alongside an announcement that it will be adapted by the same team that made the movie of THUG. Nicola Yoon’s sophomore novel, The Sun is Also A Star, was one of my favorite reads last year, and both the teaser and full length trailers dropped this week. (Aside: can we please come up with a better term than “sophomore” for second novels? It feels so condescending, especially in YA.) And in non-YA kinda adaptation news, there’s a teaser for the new Twilight Zone, too.Oh, and Marvel has a teaser for Spider-Man: Far From Home, which looks (annoyingly) like it’s going to be at least as wonderful as Homecoming. P.S. Netflix is making a Leigh Bardugo series.What dimension are you even in? 🌀
— Paramount+ (@paramountplus) February 4, 2019
Witness the extended cut of the debut @TheTwilightZone promo featuring @JordanPeele. #TheTwilightZone pic.twitter.com/Wrk5SjceOB
Awards
The shortlist is out for the 2019 International Prize for Arab Literature. Check out the authors’ other works! The PEN America award honorees have been announced. Katisha rounded up allllll the ALA awards from last week’s ceremony, and it’s worth a look. The Edgar Awards nominations were announced recently, and I was deeply concerned about the incredible whiteness of the list, while absolutely thrilled that my dear friends Nova Ren Suma and Courtney Summers were both nominated. The Man Group has withdrawn sponsorship of the Man Booker Prize, leaving its future a question mark.Other News
Poet Mary Oliver died last month after a wild and precious life.Bookish Twitter
So much is happening, y’all. Let me explain. No, it’s too much. Let me sum up. According to people on Twitter, whom I will not be linking tyvm, in order to be a writer (or artist), you must:- Quit your day job
- Have rich friends
- Pay an editor
Literary Grifters
Oh, friends. I have been wanting to write about grifters since last summer’s Anna March exposé in the Los Angeles Times. Disclosure: I wrote for March’s short-lived magazine and was apparently the only person she actually paid. (I have a whole lot of feelings about that, including guilt because she primarily fucked over people of color.) Then this week Dan Mallory happened. And y’all. I just. I can’t. He faked two PhDs, both of which should have been dead giveaways for his grifts (one was on Munchausen’s Syndrome and he faked cancer, my GOD), just straight-up didn’t go to his $200k/year editing job for months, told countless lies, pretended his mother was dead, and somehow…got a(n almost) million dollar book deal and sold the movie rights, laughing all the way to the bank. Meanwhile, women of color are struggling to work in publishing because there is no support for them, financial or otherwise. It’s not good, y’all. It’s not good at all.That’s all for now. If anything important happens, I will either be lying on the floor in the dark or huddled under several blankets. MAYBE BOTH.