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      A Bronx Teacher Asked. Tommy Orange Answered.

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      When the author received an impassioned email, he dropped everything to visit the students who inspired it.Tommy Orange sat at the front of a classroom in the Bronx, listening as a group of high school students discussed his novel “There There.”A boy wearing blue glasses raised his hand. “All the characters have some form of disconnection, even trauma,” Michael Almanzar, 19, said. “That’s the world we live in. That’s all around us. It’s not like it’s in some faraway land. That’s literally your next-door neighbor.”The class broke into a round of finger snaps, as if we were at an old-school poetry slam on the Lower East Side and not in an English class at Millennium Art Academy, on the corner of Lafayette and Pugsley Avenues.Orange took it all in with a mixture of gratitude and humility — the semicircle of earnest, engaged teenagers; the bulletin board decorated with words describing “There There” (“hope,” “struggle,” “mourning,” “discovery”); the shelf of well-thumbed copies wearing dust jackets in various stages of disintegration.When Orange spoke, students paid close attention. Many identified with the characters in Orange’s book “There There” and with the world it portrayed. Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesHis eyebrows shot up when a student wearing a sweatshirt that said “I Am My Ancestors’ Wildest Dreams” compared the book to “The Road,” by Cormac McCarthy. When three consecutive students spoke about how they related to Orange’s work because of their own mental health struggles, he was on the verge of tears.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Guernica Magazine Retracts Essay by Israeli as Staffers Quit

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      An Israeli writer’s essay about seeking common ground with Palestinians led to the resignation of at least 10 staff members at Guernica.Guernica, a small but prestigious online literary magazine, was thrown into turmoil in recent days after publishing — and then retracting — a personal essay about coexistence and war in the Middle East by an Israeli writer, leading to multiple resignations by its volunteer staff members, who said that they objected to its publication.In an essay titled “From the Edges of a Broken World,” Joanna Chen, a translator of Hebrew and Arabic poetry and prose, had written about her experiences trying to bridge the divide with Palestinians, including by volunteering to drive Palestinian children from the West Bank to receive care at Israeli hospitals, and how her efforts to find common ground faltered after Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack and Israel’s subsequent attacks on Gaza.It was replaced on Guernica’s webpage with a note, attributed to “admin,” stating: “Guernica regrets having published this piece, and has retracted it,” and promising further explanation. Since the essay was published, at least 10 members of the magazine’s all-volunteer staff have resigned, including its former co-publisher, Madhuri Sastry, who on social media wrote that the essay “attempts to soften the violence of colonialism and genocide” and called for a cultural boycott of Israeli institutions.Chen said in an email that she believed her critics had misunderstood “the meaning of my essay, which is about holding on to empathy when there is no human decency in sight.”“It is about the willingness to listen,” she said, “and the idea that remaining deaf to voices other than your own won’t bring the solution.”Michael Archer, the founder of Guernica, said that the magazine would publish a response in the coming days. “The time we are taking to draft this statement reflects both our understanding of the seriousness of the concerns raised and our commitment to engaging with them meaningfully,” he wrote in a text.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      William Whitworth, Revered Writer and Editor, Is Dead at 87

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      After writing memorable character sketches and fine-tuning others’ copy at The New Yorker, he spent two decades as editor in chief of The Atlantic Monthly.William Whitworth, who wrote revealing profiles in The New Yorker giving voice to his idiomatic subjects and polished the prose of some of the nation’s celebrated writers as its associate editor before transplanting that magazine’s painstaking standards to The Atlantic, where he was editor in chief for 20 years, died on Friday in Conway, Ark., near Little Rock. He was 87.His daughter, Katherine Whitworth Stewart, announced the death. She said he was being treated after several falls and operations in a hospital.As a young college graduate, Mr. Whitworth forsook a promising career as a jazz trumpeter to do a different kind of improvisation as a journalist.He covered breaking news for The Arkansas Gazette and later for The New York Herald Tribune, where his colleagues eventually included some of the most exhilarating voices in American journalism, among them Dick Schaap, Jimmy Breslin and Tom Wolfe.In 1966, William Shawn, The New Yorker’s decorous but dictatorial editor, wooed Mr. Whitworth to the venerated weekly. He took the job although he had already accepted one at The New York Times.At The New Yorker, he injected wit into pensive “Talk of the Town” vignettes. He also profiled the famous and the not so famous, including the jazz greats Dizzy Gillespie and Charles Mingus (accompanied by photos from his former Herald Tribune colleague Jill Krementz) and the foreign policy adviser Eugene V. Rostow. He expanded his profile of Mr. Rostow into a 1970 book, “Naïve Questions About War and Peace.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      RuPaul Is Sending a Rainbow Bus to Give Away Books Targeted by Bans

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      The star, whose show “RuPaul’s Drag Race” has an international following, is one of the founders of a new online bookstore promoting underrepresented authors. The giveaways are part of its outreach.At a time of book bans and efforts by state legislatures to ban drag shows, the performer and television producer who is arguably the country’s most famous drag star, RuPaul, is the co-founder of a new online bookstore that will be sending a rainbow school bus from the West Coast to the South to distribute the very books targeted by those bans.He announced on Monday that he was one of three business partners behind the bookstore, Allstora, which will promote underrepresented authors and provide writers with a greater share of profits than other online booksellers do.RuPaul said that this sort of book website would fill an important gap, especially in “these strange days, we’re living in,” to support the ideas of people “who are willing to push the conversation forward.”In recent years, there has been a sharp rise in efforts to restrict access to books at libraries in the United States, and most of the challenged books are by or about L.G.B.T.Q. people or people of color, according to library and free speech organizations. Some libraries have received bomb threats, and others have faced closure over efforts to remove books. At the same time, states have tried to ban drag shows and restrict access to health care for transgender people.RuPaul with Eric Cervini, left, co-founder and chief executive of Allstora, and Adam Powell, co-founder and director of the Rainbow Book Bus.AllstoraEnter RuPaul. Drag has been in popular culture for decades, but his reality competition show “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” which is airing its sixteenth season and has more than a dozen international editions, has brought the work of hundreds, if not thousands, of drag performers to home audiences.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Neil Gaiman on the Collectibles He’s Auctioning

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      Art by Moebius, a Christmas card by Gaiman and a Swamp Thing cover are among the items.“I like the idea of spreading joy,” Neil Gaiman, the author of the Sandman series, said in an interview about why he is selling some of the original comic book art, toys and other collectibles he has amassed.During the dark days of pandemic lockdowns, buying art provided a particular comfort, he recalled. Works would arrive and he would “just kvell,” he said. He remembered buying a drawing of Winnie-the-Pooh and Piglet in the snow, by the British artist E.H. Shepard. “If someone comes to the house, I say, ‘Come and look at this,’ if they are the right sort of person,” he said.He views art ownership as custodial. “It’s your job to keep it safe and hope the house doesn’t burn down while it is in your care,” he said. Then someone else can do the same, he said, and “hope their house doesn’t burn down.”Gaiman said he was inspired by his friend Geoffrey Notkin, of “Meteorite Men” on the Science Channel, who auctioned part of his collection of meteorites and donated some proceeds to charity.Gaiman will donate part of the auction proceeds to the Hero Initiative, which is an emergency fund for comics creators, and the Authors League Fund, which benefits writers in financial hardship; he will also give living artists whose work sells part of the proceeds. The items are on display at Heritage Auctions in Dallas, and bidding starts on Friday.More than 100 pieces are up for sale, and Gaiman pointed to some highlights. The author Neil Gaiman said he hopes others find joy in the memorabilia he is shedding.Rozette Rago for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Alvin Moscow, Shipwreck Chronicler and Prolific Collaborator, Dies at 98

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      After writing a best seller about the sinking of the Andrea Doria, he was a co-author with Richard M. Nixon, Patty Hearst, William S. Paley and others.Alvin Moscow, who wrote a best-selling account of the sinking of the ocean liner Andrea Doria in 1956, then collaborated on the memoirs of several public figures, including Richard M. Nixon soon after he lost the 1960 presidential election to John F. Kennedy, died on Feb. 6 in North Las Vegas, Nev. He was 98.His death, in a hospital, was confirmed by his daughter Nina Moscow.Mr. Moscow was a reporter for The Associated Press when he covered the court hearings focused on determining the cause of the violent collision between the Andrea Doria, which was en route from Genoa, Italy, to New York, and the European-bound Stockholm, in dense fog about 45 miles south of Nantucket Island in Massachusetts on the evening of July 25, 1956.In all, 51 people died. But in a remarkable civil maritime rescue operation, more than 1,600 passengers and crew members survived.In “Collision Course: The Andrea Doria and the Stockholm” (1959), Mr. Moscow described the moment of impact between the ships:“With the force of a battering ram of more than one million tons, the Stockholm prow plunged into the speeding Italian ship, crumbling like a thin sheet of tin, until her energy was spent. With the Stockholm pinioned in her, the Andrea Doria, twice her size, pivoted sharply under the impact, dragging the Stockholm along as the giant propellers of the Italian liner churned the black sea violently to white.”“Collision Course,” Mr. Moscow’s account of the sinking of the ocean liner Andrea Doria, was a New York Times best seller for 15 weeks.PutnamWalter Lord, who had described the sinking of the Titanic in his book “A Night to Remember” (1955), praised Mr. Moscow’s “magnificent analysis of the accident and sinking” in a review of “Collision Course” in The New York Times.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Some Authors Were Left Out of Awards Held in China. Leaked Emails Show Why.

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      When some books, including best sellers, were conspicuously absent from the science fiction Hugo Awards last year, writers and fans became suspicious.The Hugo Awards, a major literary prize for science fiction, have been engulfed in controversy over revelations that some writers may have been excluded based on their perceived criticism of China or the Chinese government.Suspicions in the science fiction community have been building for weeks that something was amiss with last year’s awards, which rotate to a different city each year, and in 2023 were hosted in Chengdu, China. Now, newly released emails show that the awards were likely manipulated because of political concerns.Here’s what we know.What are the Hugo Awards?The awards, first established in 1953, are given annually at a gathering hosted by the World Science Fiction Convention. Writers are nominated and awarded prizes by members of the World Science Fiction Society, which includes science fiction fans. Each person can nominate five works for each category. Those entries are then tallied so that the six works with the most votes become finalists. Previous winners have included luminaries like Ursula K. Le Guin, William Gibson and Philip K. Dick.Why were writers, and fans, upset?In January, the Hugo Awards revealed which writers had been nominated for last year’s awards, and by how many people. The information made clear that multiple authors who had enough nominations to be finalists were shut out of the process; award administrators had marked them as not eligible, without specifying a reason. Among the excluded authors were two Western writers of Chinese descent: R.F. Kuang, who is Chinese American and who was widely expected to be recognized for her novel “Babel,” a historical fantasy set in mid-1800s Oxford, and Xiran Jay Zhao, a Chinese Canadian author whose novel “Iron Widow” is a sci-fi reimagining of China’s female emperor.“I assume this was a matter of undesirability rather than ineligibility,” Kuang posted on Instagram in January. “Excluding ‘undesirable’ work is not only embarrassing for all involved parties, but renders the entire process and organization illegitimate.”What did the leaked emails reveal?The exclusion of popular authors of Chinese descent led to speculation that the awards’ administrators had weeded out those whose political views might prove controversial in China. Those suspicions were confirmed recently, when emails leaked by Diane Lacey, a member of last year’s Hugo administration team, were published in a report by Chris M. Barkley, a science fiction fan and journalist, and Jason Sanford, a journalist and science fiction writer.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The National Book Awards Opens Up to Writers Who Are Not U.S. Citizens

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      The awards, which celebrate the best of American literature, are expanding the definition of who qualifies.Since their inauguration in 1950, the National Book Awards have set a lofty goal: to celebrate the best writing in America. And for most of the awards’ history, American literature was defined as books written by United States citizens.On Thursday, the National Book Foundation, which administers the prizes, announced that it was dropping the citizenship requirement, opening up the prize to immigrants and other longtime residents who have made their home in the United States.Ruth Dickey, the executive director of the National Book Foundation, said she hoped the change would help broaden the way the book world defines great American writing.“We are all deeply thinking about, how do we most expansively think about the literature of a place, and how writers contribute to that place?” she said. “How do we think about who are the writers who are part of a literary community, and who are we excluding when we draw certain boundaries?”In adopting the change, the National Book Awards are following other major literary prizes and organizations.Last fall, the board that administers the Pulitzer Prizes said that beginning with their 2025 prizes, permanent and longtime residents of the United States would be eligible for its awards for literature, drama and music. Previously, those categories were only open to American citizens, whereas the journalism awards were open to noncitizens whose work was published by U.S. media. The Academy of American Poets and the Poetry Foundation have also expanded their prizes to include poetry by immigrants with temporary legal status.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More