ArtsJournal: Arts, Culture, Ideas

WORDS

What Our Language Reveals About Us

Our language is also infused with our sensory memories and experiences, and this allows it to be a source of pleasure and even transcendence, in addition to being a tool for exchanging information. - Nautilus

You’re A Successful Writer. And Yet You Can’t Make A Living At It

 A 2022 report from the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS) found that the median income of full-time authors had fallen by more than 60% since 2006, to £7,000 a year. - The Guardian

University of Cincinnati Press Will Close Down Next June

"The university said that it had 'determined that the long-term financial sustainment of the University of Cincinnati Press is not feasible. Funding resources, including start-up funds, have been exhausted and the press is not in a self-sustaining financial position.'" - Publishers Weekly

What Defines Success For A Debut Novel?

What is the magic sales number an author needs to reach to prove their worth? 1,000? 2,000? The precise sales figure likely varies from agent to agent, publisher to publisher, but one thing is clear for nearly all debut novelists, no matter who publishes them. - The Millions

Percival Everett’s “James,” Revisionist Take On “Huckleberry Finn,” Wins $50,000 Kirkus Prize For Fiction

"Everett’s novel, which imagines Mark Twain’s classic from the perspective of the escaped enslaved man whom Huckleberry Finn befriends, is also a finalist for the National Book Award and the Booker Prize." Adam Higginbotham’s Challenger took the nonfiction prize and Kenneth M. Cadow's Gather won for young readers’ literature. - AP

TikTok’s Parent Company Will Start Publishing Hard-Copy Books

"ByteDance, the Chinese technology giant that owns TikTok, made an initial move into publishing digital books last year. Now the company’s publishing imprint, 8th Note Press, is planning to significantly expand its retail footprint by publishing print editions and selling them in physical bookstores." - The New York Times

Atlantic Magazine Becomes Profitable, Reports 1M Subscriptions And Returns To Monthly Print

It’s an everything-old-is-new-again finding that also explains the continued success of some books, luxury magazines and literary journals. - CNN

Young People Won’t Read Books? That’s Just Not True!

"The rising young generations want texts that matter to them, that reflect their lives and experiences. So when we force-feed yet another vanilla canonical dust collector, and then complain that they aren’t playing along, it’s just not a good look for us." - CMSThomas

Meet The Woman Leading The Digitization Of The U.S. National Archives

"It makes a weird kind of sense that the government worker who understands the value of providing online advice and information to far-flung Americans … is a woman whose hometown is a 32-hour drive from a reference desk in D.C." - The Washington Post

One Year After Cyberattack, British Library Is Gradually Coming Back

"The time it is taking us to bring our services back is an exact measure of the destructiveness of the original attack, which directly targeted our core computing infrastructure," said CEO Roly Keating. The estimated cost of the incident is £1.6 million ($2.09 million). - ARTnews

A Room Of One’s Own: Creative Space For Writers

Every writer is different. The path to telling stories about our world is hard won, and the space that’s necessary to allow us to find our respective voices differs. The world we carry in our heads is arguably the most important space of all. It is a space whose suffocations and seductions compete for our attention. - LitHub

I Was An Established Writer. Then I Went Back To School And Learned…

Despite all the one-click-away distractions, my peers had insightful queries, if rather too many, interrupting lectures as if pressing every hyperlink. Rarely were they the moralizing young bores depicted by moralizing old bores in the culture wars. Mainly, they worried about finding jobs. - The New York Times

All Appalachian Writers Are Environmentalists

Well, maybe not J.D. Vance. But everyone else, thanks to decades - a century - of devastating floods and mudslides, mountaintop removal and mining disasters. - Book Riot

Pushing Back Against That Long Atlantic Freak-Out About Students Not Being Asked To Read Books

Maybe the problem is the reporter’s clickbait comprehension? “Young readers are eminently capable of critically engaging in long form content, but they’re rightfully demanding a seat at the table where decisions about texts are being made.” - Teaching & Learning

Booker Shortlist Authors On The Moment Inspiration Struck

“It feels incorrect, to have inspiration strike in the midst of grief, but what probably happened was that I was trying to get away somehow, to tell myself a distracting story. And a distracting story it was.” - The Guardian (UK)

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