“I’m still very alert to the inequality in the world, and also inequality in my industry. I am not there to endorse the status quo. I’m there to bring other people with me and to open the doors, always, to great talent.” - The Guardian (UK)
“I understood the didactic logic of forcing the reader to intellectually and emotionally live through those brutal moments, but the personal distance nagged at me. ... I did not want such images to monopolize my creative output.” - LitHub
Performance, after the cataclysm, is a common theme in science fiction books and shows. That includes, in one of the genre's most literary forms, Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven. But why? - Reactor
Since 2021, the Sunshine State has led the country in advancing the “parental rights” agenda. Contrary to its name, this agenda has used fuzzy, coded language to manufacture moral panic, and to deliver control over what students can read and learn. - PEN America
“Many of the grants were meant to partially reimburse nonprofit publishers for projects they’ve already paid for and completed, leaving them with surprise shortfalls. And while most expect to be able to cover the immediate deficits, they worry about what the move augurs for the future of the literary arts.” - Publishers Weekly
“Researchers from the University of Groningen combined AI and carbon dating to find that many of the scrolls are older than scholars previously estimated. Some, it seems, could date to the time of the biblical authors themselves, not centuries after.” - ARTnews
These are very substantial benefits, and it is true they are lost when we write using a keyboard or keypad. But on balance, far more is gained, which is why the past half century has seen nearly a complete transformation from pen strokes to keystrokes. - Brookings
It’s two problems in one. The detritus — diary entries, to-do lists, correspondence — in which researchers often discover key details rarely gets put on paper these days, and messaging apps often delete material automatically. And if those things are preserved, how do archivists sort through a 4-terabyte hard drive? - The Atlantic (MSN)
These novels, aimed at young men who will soon be targets of recruitment drives, often feature hyper-nationalist, crudely-drawn “accidental travel” plots, wherein the hero is transported to pivotal moments in Russia’s past, using 21st-century knowledge to alter history in Russia’s favor, wreaking revenge against foreigners who try to destroy the Motherland. - The Guardian
“The problem AI (has is) that it (can’t) make up its own jokes, the writer said. ‘It has no sense of humour – you don’t want to hear a joke told by ChatGPT. If there’s a moment when there’s a funny book written by ChatGPT I think we’re screwed.’” - The Guardian
“Disney Publishing’s most recent pivot came in 2020, when it sold 1,110 children’s titles to Hachette and decided to focus on acquiring global content that it can leverage across multiple platforms. In recent months, the group has made a number of significant changes,” among them a major licensing agreement with Penguin Random House. - Publishers Weekly
“Speaking whale would expand our sense of space and time into a planetary song. I imagine we’d think very differently about polluting the ocean soundscape so carelessly.” - The Guardian (UK)
Hanan Issa: “Growing up, she said she never saw writing as a viable career: ‘I'm working class, raised in a council house and to me, it wasn't considered an option.’” But in 2016, the Prime Minister said something so ignorant that boom. Poetry! - BBC
