ArtsJournal: Arts, Culture, Ideas

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Penguin Random House Lays Off Publishers Of Two Of Its Most Prominent Imprints

"The Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a Penguin Random House division, announced Monday the dismissals of Alfred A. Knopf publisher Reagan Arthur and Pantheon/Schocken publisher Lisa Lucas. A publishing official … said that the restructuring was for financial reasons." - AP

Canada, That Sexy Travel Destination

You too might fall for Canada if you’re reading the right romances - and not just the (surging) hockey genre, either. - CBC

All The Oscar-Bait Literary Adaptations Coming Down The Cannes Red Carpet

Whether they’re from classics or gothic novels, Cannes usually shows some Very Serious Literary fare looking for distribution - and this year is no different. - LitHub

If You’re Curious About Alice Munro, Here Are Twenty Free Stories To Read

When Munro won the Nobel Prize in 2013, the Swedish Academy called her “a master of the contemporary short story.” The queen of subtly intense psychological stories about the ways rural poverty grinds down those trapped in it, and the price of freedom, died last week. - Open Culture

The ‘Deep Tissue Read’ Of Literary Translation

By a human, that is. “I did an event with Leila Slimani where she said she thought her translators know her better than her family. She puts most of her consciousness and her life into her books, and we translators are more connected to them than anybody else.” - The Guardian (UK)

The Self-Reinvention Of Reese Witherspoon In A World Of Books

Witherspoon: “When there’s a big economic shift in the media business, it’s not the superhero movies or independent films we lose out on. It’s the middle, which is usually where women live. … So I decided to fund a company to make those kinds of movies.” - The New York Times

Accents Can Be Contagious

That foreign accent students sometimes come home with after studying abroad isn't (or isn't only) an affectation. - The Atlantic (MSN)

We Should All Just Relax About Apostrophes, Says John McWhorter

Here's his argument. He's wrong, of course. - The New York Times

How Alice Munro Reinvigorated The Short Story

What Munro did was not so much write about women as write from inside them. When her characters don’t understand exactly what they’re feeling, she expresses it in such a way that you can both feel the confusion yourself and see beneath it to its cause. - The New Yorker

The Questions Posed By PEN America’s Meltdown Over Gaza

"What does it mean to defend writers amid a polarizing war? When should a group that promotes free expression for all take sides? And at a time of extreme humanitarian crisis that some see as genocide, is a commitment to big-tent dialogue a necessity, or a dodge?" - The New York Times

Condé Nast Staffers Approve Their First-Ever Union Contract

"On Tuesday, 97% of Condé Union members voted 'yes' on a three-year deal" settled after 18 months of negotiations. "The agreement, which averted a threatened strike from workers at the Met Gala, boosts wages by $3.6 million in total and converts company permalancers into full-time staffers." - The Hollywood Reporter

Like, These Filler Words Have A Purpose

They call it “filler,” and it’s hard not to regard it as something bordering on the sublinguistic, an almost intolerable torturing of the magnificent instrument bequeathed to us by Shakespeare and his successors. - Hedgehog Review

The Bedazzling Bookbinders Of TikTok

"The videos often begin with … a person ripping the covers off a book. They are not vandals, however; they are bookbinders, taking part in a growing trend for replacing the covers of favourite works to make unique hardback editions, and posting about their creations on TikTok and Instagram." - The Observer (UK)

King Lear Had A Happy Ending For 140 Years

OK, bring back the 18th century: "Cordelia gets a romance. ... She gets her love, Edgar. King Lear gets to rule. The bad people are punished. The good people get rewarded." - Happy Dancing

Colm Toibin On Writing An ‘Intimate’ Sequel To Brooklyn

“Tóibín is a master of silence and shadows; his subjects are abandonment, loss and denial – the things not said, the feelings not acted on.” - The Guardian (UK)

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