Creative 5/6/2022

This week, a HarperCollins scammer and Oprah’s problematic faves.

UP FOR DISCUSSION

 

A SCAMMER IS PRETENDING TO BE A HARPERCOLLINS EDITORIAL DIRECTOR

This week, HarperCollins editorial director Phoebe Morgan tweeted that someone has been posing as her using a false email address. The scammer contacts writers and tells them they are interested in striking a contract for crime fiction. As pointed out in The Bookseller, the nature of this crime is not dissimilar from the still-baffling email scams by Filippo Bernardini, the man who snagged unpublished manuscripts from numerous writers by pretending to be various members of the literary industry. 

In the HarperCollins case, the email scammer posing as Phoebe Morgan allegedly told recipients that they discovered their work and would like to set up a Zoom interview. I’m not entirely sure how the scammer would then benefit from this information, or why they would have any interest in targeting the bank accounts of writers. I would recommend scammers consider victims in a more financially solvent industry, as they may be disappointed by what our echoing coffers may yield. 

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS’S LATEST TITLE RANKLES

Writers are protesting an upcoming title by Oxford University Press, “Gender-Critical Feminism,” which critics believe runs the risk of “embolden[ing] those who use anti-trans rhetoric,” Publisher’s Weekly, reports. The book’s author, Dr. Holly Lawford-Smith, has incited controversy before “for her views on gender” and for writing in opposition to lockdowns during the pandemic. More than 800 writers signed an open letter to OUP, which responded with its own open letter in late April, essentially nodding respectfully to dissidents, but maintaining that they would proceed with publication of the text anyway. 

OPRAH STILL STANS “AMERICAN DIRT”

Um, Oprah, 2019 called and wants its barbed-wire centerpieces back: on ​​ABC News’ literary podcast, The Book Case, Oprah spoke about her decision to highlight Jeanine Cummins’ controversial American Dirt as an Oprah’s Book Club pick. ICYMI: “American Dirt” is a book written by a woman who identified as white as recently as 2016, and is about the “fictional story of a Mexican mother and son’s journey to the border after a cartel murders the rest of their family,” according to Vulture. The author received a massive, seven-figure advance for the book. Oprah’s selection of the book as her Book Club Pick incited the ire of the internet, with critics describing its premise as “brownface.” Two years later, Oprah stood by her choice. “I had chosen that book and stood by that book because the truth of the matter is, I really loved the book,” she told The Book Case.

 

BEST OF LIT TWITTER

-Leah Johnson’s social media presence was a boon to her career – but that’s a double-edged sword, she wrote for Catapult’s “Don’t Write Alone” series.
-Marie-Helene Bertino tweeted that writers should “be careful who you share your drafts with” – and then clarified she’s not subtweeting shady readers, but referencing the Supreme Court abortion leak this week … though I’d say both interpretations apply.
-Matt Bell summarized “a certain kind of literary fiction” as “two people watching it snow in Connecticut and slowly deciding to divorce.”

AWARD ZONE

-Lea Ypi won the Royal Society of Literature’s Ondaatje Prize, which celebrates books that “best evoke the spirit of the place.” Ypi is the author of “Free,” which tells the story of the author’s time in Albania “when it was one of the last Stalinist outposts in Europe.”
-Roxane Gay’s podcast, The Roxane Gay Agenda, won a Webby Award for its episode “Diversity & Inclusion.”
-The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Creative Writing Program announced the following as its 2022-2023 Poetry & Fiction fellows: Amanda Rizkalla, Steven Espada Dawson, Chessy Normile, Taymour Soomro, and Yalitza Ferreras.

CRAFT CORNER

–Why don’t sci-fi and historical fantasy writers collab more?: Christopher M. Cevasco talked about his efforts to bridge the two, his oeuvre, religion, and more, at WIRED.
-Rhian Sasseen reviewed “Checkout 19” and considered “the literature of the grocery store” for The Baffler.
-Up from the Paris Review archives, an unearthed 1993 interview with Don DeLillo as part of their series, “The Art of Fiction.”

THE LATEST IN LIBRARIES

-Inside public libraries that give out “free seeds and gardening education“ across the US.
–A library in Nashville now offers a “limited-edition library card” that declares, “I read banned books.”
-In Texas, the state’s Library Association met in person for the first time since 2019 amid protests and ceaseless efforts to ban books statewide. Drag queen Alyssa Edwards also made an appearance to celebrate libraries’ “drag queen story times.”

DEALS, DEALS, DEALS

-Sally Hepworth, Julie Menanno, and Zoraida Córdova are among the writers whose titles sold this week to St. Martin’s Press, Simon & Schuster, and Atria, respectively.

 

PAGE TO SCREEN

-The prop designer for “Severance,” the Apple TV adaptation of Ling Ma’s 2018 novel of the same name, spoke with The New York Times about “sourcing and making” the set objects featured on the show.
-Rick Riordan announced the remaining main cast members for a TV adaptation of his series, “Percy Jackson and the Olympians,” for Disney+.

HIGHLIGHTING LITERARY HISTORY / IN MEMORIAM

This week, Irving Rosenthal died at 91. While distinctly not a household name like the authors he helped champion (including Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Borroughs), Rosenthal was an early publisher of writers who would go on to define the Beat Generation. In this recollection from a friend to The New York Times, Rosenthal sounds like an absolute icon: 

“Irving had a radical disinterest in fame and notoriety … After jump-starting the Beat Generation by publishing William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac and Gregory Corso in his magazine Big Table, Irving spent the rest of his life making himself invisible to the literary and academic establishment and the press, while living out his anticapitalist beliefs in a commune that persisted from the Summer of Love era until the present day.”

RECOMMENDED READING

-Two in The New Yorker this week: first, a heartbreaking feature on Marvin Heiferman’s “photographic shiva” for his late husband, Maurice Berger, and second, Cal Newport argued that our hysteria about Elon Musk’s Twitter acquisition is “overblown.”
-Abigail Nguyen Rosewood considered the poetic lessons of Tarot for LitHub.
-Using reference points ranging from scientists to sci-fi writers, Bon Appetit imagined “what dinner will look like in the next 100 years.”

AND EVERYTHING ELSE

–The New York Times’ earnings for Q1 of 2022 were boosted significantly by the paper’s purchase of Wordle in January 2021, with “tens of millions of users” subscribing to the “Games” section.
-Jakob Vala is leaving his role at Tin House. Vala worked as a senior designer at the indie press for more than a decade.
-A Politico feature explores the overall “boredom” of covering Joe Biden’s administration, which has resulted in a significant downward trend in books about the current regime,  particularly when compared to the success of books about Donald Trump’s presidency.