You can hear the cheers from here! After widespread outcry and a petition with signatures from the likes of Tom Stoppard, Jonathan Lethem, Salman Rushdie, Susan Bernofsky, and Annie Proulx, the New York Public Library has squashed its plans to do away with the book stacks in its 42nd Street edifice. If you’re outside the New York area, chances are you can still partake in the Worldwide Library, which is finally going digital—not without a hitch, however.
In similar places of high-book density: Giovanni’s Place, widely considered the first LGBTQ bookstore in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is closing. Here’s why the closure portends poorly for the future of LGBTQ publishing. Bookstores are sharing spaces for writers and readers, but when the two groups meet, these readers become listeners—and pesky question-askers: why do they ask such stupid questions? Perhaps such institutions are all for naught, anyways: the novel is really dead (or is it un-dead?).
Spotlight on politics, yet again: in Russia, president Vladimir Putin has prohibited cursing or obscenity in books (those deemed obscene must be wrapped in plastic). For context: here’s a bit of a primer of mat, or cursing in Russian. Expletives (or lack thereof) aside, the country is rife with talent: on reasserting the country’s storied literary tradition. Meanwhile, Salman Rushdie, Toni Morrison, and the members of Pussy Riot, among others, speak out in favor of unfettered freedom of expression.
Authors in focus: Haitian-American author Edwidge Danticat writes on the high moral price of buying sugar, from the perspective of sugar plantations in the Dominican Republic. An interview with Norwegian author Jø Nesbo on Scandinavian crime fiction and his own writing. Via Guernica, here’s an interview Iraqi filmmaker and writer Hassan Blasim on writing in literary Arabic, war-torn Iraq, and living as an undocumented immigrant.
Iranian-born Pomegranate Soup author Marsha Mehran, still at work on her multi-part series, has passed away unexpectedly at thirty-six years old. From the New York Times archives, a “Lives” essay about finding her place in the world.