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Rushdie Quits Festival Over Assassination Fears

Received intelligence about plot at Jaipur literary event

(Newser) - Salman Rushdie has dropped out of India's top literary festival after hearing that assassins may have been planning to attend—and kill him. Powerful clerics had protested the author's attendance at the Jaipur festival, which opened today and was to feature Rushdie as a speaker. But "intelligence...

Italian Author Opens Fire on African Traders

Right-wing extremist kills 2 in Florence

(Newser) - A far-right Italian author opened fire on Senegalese traders at two markets in the heart of Florence yesterday, killing two and seriously injuring three. Witnesses said Gianluca Casseri calmly got out of his car and took aim at the African vendors, the BBC reports. The 50-year-old science fiction author turned...

Lost Jack Kerouac Novel 'The Sea Is My Brother' Published
 Lost Kerouac 
 Book Published 
Nov 25, 2011 3:54 AM CST

Lost Kerouac Book Published

Author was just 20 when he penned The Sea Is My Brother in 1942

(Newser) - Jack Kerouac's first novel is hitting bookstores 42 years after the death of the Beat Generation icon and nearly 70 years after he wrote it. The On the Road author was just 20 years old when he wrote The Sea Is My Brother, which deals with his experiences as...

Brazenly Plagiarized Spy Novel Pulled

Author's debut was 'collage of others' work'

(Newser) - Bookseller Quentin Rowan appears to have forged a writing career entirely by raiding the contents of his shelves. Publisher Little, Brown & Co. recalled every single copy of his debut spy thriller, Assassin of Secrets—written under the pseudonym QR Markham—after discovering that passages had been lifted from more...

Maurice Sendak: 'My Work Is Not Great'

He's 'wrong, of course,' counters Dave Eggers in Vanity Fair

(Newser) - Maurice Sendak may be 83, but he’s not slowing down—in fact, he may be picking up speed. Sendak has a new book coming out, the first in 30 years that he’s both written and illustrated, writes Dave Eggers in Vanity Fair . Bumble-Ardy, about a pig whose family...

So, Just Who Wrote That Celebrity Novel?

Probably not the celebrity, says the 'New York Times'

(Newser) - Just because Nicole Richie is a reality TV star doesn't mean she can't also write. In fact, she claims to write every morning, before her family wakes up, and said last year that she writes "all my own stories." How else do you think she'd...

Maurice Sendak: ‘I Wonder Why People Still Have Children’

Renowned kids’ author is not happy with humanity

(Newser) - Renowned children's author Maurice Sendak is 82 now, aware of his own mortality, and more concerned than ever that grown-ups are mucking things up for kids. "I think I'm getting out just in time," he tells the Philadelphia Inquirer . "Watching the news, everything seems to...

Nanny Sues The Help Author

Kathryn Stockett turned her into character, says brother's nanny

(Newser) - Author Kathryn Stockett's best-seller The Help borrows a little too heavily from real life and from one life in particular, according to a nanny suing the author. Ablene Cooper says the book's character "Aibeleen"—who, like her, is a middle-aged black nanny with a gold tooth whose son...

Stieg Larsson's Girlfriend Is Out for Revenge


 Stieg Larsson's 
 Girlfriend Is Out 
 for Revenge 
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Feb 19, 2011 6:50 PM CST

Stieg Larsson's Girlfriend Is Out for Revenge

Eva Gabrielsson's memoir goes after his brother, father

(Newser) - The lifelong girlfriend of late Swedish author Stieg Larsson—The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, et al—is staking her claim to the books' legacy in a new memoir, writes Sasha Watson in Slate . "It was from our lives and our 32 years side by side that the books...

Babe Creator Dick King-Smith Dead at 88
Babe Creator
Dick King-Smith Dead at 88
OBITUARY
Jan 6, 2011 2:53 AM CST

Babe Creator Dick King-Smith Dead at 88

British children's author wrote more than 100 books on rural life

(Newser) - Dick King-Smith, the British children's author who created one of filmdom's favorite pigs, has died at the age of 88. The writer passed away peacefully at his long-time home in rural England, the Guardian reports. King-Smith, a World War II vet, spent 20 years as a farmer before turning to...

Bad Sex Writing Award Goes to...

Sorry, Rowan Somerville: Sex and lepidopterists just don't mix

(Newser) - “Like a lepidopterist mounting a tough-skinned insect with a too blunt pin he screwed himself into her.” If this less-than-amorous passage makes you cringe, you're not alone: Irish author Rowan Somerville has won this year's Bad Sex in Fiction Award for the passage in The Shape of Her....

Stieg Larsson's Emails: How He Flouted Convention

Late author purposely defied usual rules of the crime novel genre

(Newser) - Swedish author Stieg Larsson died at age 50 before witnessing the phenomenal success of his Girl With the Dragon Tattoo trilogy. Today, the Wall Street Journal has emails from Larsson to his editor about his goal of writing books that flouted convention. (No spoilers here, but the full article has...

Fiddler On the Roof Author Dead at 98

Joseph Stein penned hit Broadway musicals over 60-year career

(Newser) - Joseph Stein, the playwright best known for turning Fiddler On the Roof from a Yiddish short story into a Broadway musical, has died at the age of 98. The Tony Award-winning writer supplied the story for almost a dozen more musicals, including Zorba and Take Me Along, in a career...

Jane Austen's Style? Not Actually Jane Austen's

An editor was likely the one to polish her prose, says professor

(Newser) - Jane Austen is known as a “perfect stylist,” but those perfectly crafted sentences may not actually be hers. After studying 1,100 pages of Austen’s handwritten, unpublished manuscripts, an Oxford professor concluded that “the polished punctuation and epigrammatic style … is simply not there,” she...

'Jewish Jane Austen' Wins Booker Prize

Howard Jacobson's comic novel is 'profound,' 'wise'

(Newser) - The writer who once called the Man Booker Prize an "absolute abomination" was last night awarded the prize for his 11th novel, The Finkler Question. Howard Jacobson, who calls himself "the Jewish Jane Austen," was “truly flabbergasted” by the honor, reports the Telegraph . “I was...

Thief Grabs Franzen's Glasses, Demands Ransom

Author runs into latest Brit snafoodle at Hyde Park event

(Newser) - A London literary event featuring US author Jonathan Franzen was gatecrashed yesterday by a crazed thief who grabbed the glasses right off the writer's face, left behind a $150,000 ransom demand for them, then leaped in a lake as he fled British bobbies. Franzen was said to be "...

Oprah Mends Fences With Novelist Who Dissed Her
 Oprah Mends Fences With 
 Novelist Who Dissed Her 
book club pick
Sep 16, 2010 10:52 AM CDT

Oprah Mends Fences With Novelist Who Dissed Her

Jonathan Franzen's 'Freedom' lands coveted book club slot

(Newser) - Nine years after Oprah Winfrey chose Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections for her book club, and the "uncomfortable" novelist talked his way out of appearing on her show, he's getting another chance, reports the New York Post . The media magnate's people won't confirm the Oprah's Book Club selection—likely the...

Obama Publishing Children's Book

It comes out two weeks after midterm elections

(Newser) - In addition to "president," Barack Obama can already call himself an author—but now you can add "children's author" to his many hats. His Of Thee I Sing: A Letter to My Daughters was written before he took office and will be released Nov. 16, the Christian ...

Do You Have 'Me Goggles'? Here's What It Means

A new age needs new terms

(Newser) - Generation X author Douglas Coupland is busy coining more terms about the modern world. Read the full list in the New York Times . Some samples:
  • Bell's Law of Telephony: "No matter what technology is used, your monthly phone bill magically remains about the same size."
  • Blank-collar workers: "
...

Remembering Roald Dahl, 'Benevolent Sadist'

Beloved author was both 'nasty' and 'charming'

(Newser) - As the 20th anniversary of Roald Dahl's death approaches, Sam Anderson takes a look at the complicated, yet beloved, children's author. Dahl's fiction is "simultaneously thrilling and absurd and puzzling and oddly disturbing"—much like the author himself, Anderson writes in New York , noting that as one reads...

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