writers and family

Jennifer Egan appeared on the Colbert Report to discuss The Great Gatsby; Ilia Blinderman recounts time stuck in a crowded elevator with Salman Rushdie; Michael Kammen looks at the life and letters of Jack Kerouac; and other news.

Nick Flynn shares a poem composed the day of the Boston Marathon bombing; film director Steven Soderbergh is penning a crime novella on Twitter; Sandra Beasley details the experience of being targeted by a plagiarist; and other news.

Truman Capote's marked-up Breakfast at Tiffany's manuscript is up for auction; Colorado-based Mud Luscious Press has shuttered; Rumpus managing editor Isaac Fitzgerald has been named publicity director for McSweeney’s; and other news.

New York's Hudson Valley is a great place for independent bookstores; Charles Simic discusses decades of reading his poetry in venues across the country; the extraordinarily successful career of poet Carl Sandburg; and other news.

Joshua Henkin reveals the most vulnerable moments in a man’s life; Mary Jo Bang explains the Tetris Effect; eight collages of poet Bill Knott's rejection letters; and other news.

Thessaly La Force remembers prize-winning author Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, who died yesterday at her home in New York City, at age eighty-five; Aryn Kyle reveals how she spent the advance on her bestselling first novel; Architectural Digest takes a behind-the-scenes tour of the sets designed for Baz Luhrmann's adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby; and other news.

A new Thomas Pynchon novel will be published this September; Nicholas Thompson reveals the magazine article origins of the Oscar-winning film Argo; nine free college-level writing and literature classes; and other news.

A dispute over the ownership of case files that informed Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood have cast doubts on the veracity of sections of Capote’s masterpiece; to mark the fiftieth anniversary of Sylvia Plath’s death, the Guardian asked several writers to comment on what Plath’s work means to them, including Jennifer Egan, Sharon Olds, and Lena Dunham; novelist Caroline Leavitt shares a tale of love lost and found, and a pet tortoise named Minnie; and other news.

Reagan Arthur has been named the next publisher of Little, Brown; David L. Ulin discusses the newly-published work of New Yorker legend Joseph Mitchell; novelist Alix Ohlin considers the intricate relationship between male writers and female readers; and other news.