Farrar, Straus and Giroux

10/08/2020

Congratulations to Louise Glück for winning the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature! FSG is proud to publish her and her amazing work.

Louise Gluck is one of the rare contemporary poets whose work has the power to speak directly to others through her great and subtle art. As the Nobel Committee said, her poetry's "austere beauty makes individual experience universal." This is very accurate. It's wonderful to have her astringent, witty, profoundly human voice, a voice that so richly reflects our own inner feelings and reactions, so broadly recognized. I'm sure the prize will bring her many, many new readers.
-Jonathan Galassi, President of FSG and Louise Glück’s editor

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/2020/summary/

10/06/2020

CONGRATULATIONS! Jonas Hassen Khemiri's THE FAMILY CLAUSE, translated from the Swedish by Alice Menzies, is a finalist for the National Book Award for Translated Literature!

https://www.nationalbook.org/books/the-family-clause/

09/29/2020

Happy publication day to JACK, Marilynne Robinson's long-awaited return to the world of Gilead.

“Robinson is a singular figure in American fiction. She writes about faith without piousness, art without snobbery, and when she gets deep into her characters’ heads, gives their emotional crises complexity and contour... Robinson doesn’t deal in easy redemption stories or romantic happily-ever-afters; storm clouds hover over the final pages of Jack. But Robinson also conjures a sense of hard-won possibility... Robinson richly imagines Jack as he pulls off ‘his grandest larceny by far, this sly theft of happiness from the very clutches of prohibition.’” - Mark Athitakis, USA Today

Learn more:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374279301

09/22/2020

Join JACK author Marilynne Robinson in conversation with Michael Silverblatt via Barnes & Noble's virtual event series!

(Purchase of signed edition of JACK on website below by 9/27 is required to join event)

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/jack-marilynne-robinson/1136012532?ean=9780374602888

09/14/2020

Marilynne Robinson's "Jack" Follows an Interracial Couple During Segregation

"In 2005, Marilynne Robinson was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Gilead. In its citation, the Pulitzer committee said the novel offered “a hymn of praise and lamentation” to a “God-haunted existence.” In the books that followed, Home and Lila, Robinson continued to explore characters from the Iowa town she created—the eponymous Gilead—and, through them, themes of faith, existentialism, and connection. Now, with the sublime Jack, she resumes and deepens her quest, extending it to the contemplation of race."

O, The Oprah Magazine with a great review of Marilynne Robinson's new book, Jack.

It's a sublime novel.

09/10/2020

How Wagner Shaped Hollywood

How Wagner Shaped Hollywood:
An excerpt from Alex Ross' WAGNERISM in The New Yorker about how Richard Wagner infiltrated every phase of movie history, from silent pictures to superhero blockbusters.

The composer has infiltrated every phase of movie history, from silent pictures to superhero blockbusters.

07/21/2020

Celebrating Luster: A Conversation about Inspiration, Creativity, and Making Art with three artists — Raven Leilani, Nexus Cook, and Na Kim - Crowdcast

Join debut novelist Raven Leilani as she talks with art director, Na Kim, and nail polish creator, Nexus Cook—collaborators on the launch and promotion of Leilani’s novel Luster.

Expect a wide-ranging conversation on art, the wonders of color, what it means to be a female artist today, and many other topics. The conversation will be moderated by Leilani’s editor, Jenna Johnson.

https://www.crowdcast.io/e/celebratingluster

Register now for Macmillan Publishers's event on Crowdcast, scheduled to go live on Wednesday July 22, 2020 at 12:30 pm EDT.

06/01/2020

A note from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

04/14/2020

Join us tonight for a virtual conversation between Diary of a Drag Queen author Tom Rasmussen and community organizer and writer Adam Eli on Literary Hub's Virtual Book Channel!

Happening now!
https://www.crowdcast.io/e/diaryofadragqueen

04/10/2020

We are excited to reveal the cover for Marilynne Robinson's upcoming novel, Jack, publishing on September 29. Robinson returns to the world of Gilead for the latest novel in one of the great works of contemporary American fiction.
In celebration of the publication of Jack, @Picador will be reissuing Gilead, Home, and Lila with new covers designed by Na Kim (@na_son) with paintings by Charles E. Burchfield (@bpartcenter)

03/27/2020

In This Moment of Solitude, Books Can Be Our Passports

In This Moment of Solitude, Books Can Be Our Passports:

Faced with the cancellation of her book tour, Jordan Kisner, author of Thin Places, turns to books that evoke a sense of place — and recommends 8 books that might take you somewhere, too.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/27/travel/travel-books-coronavirus.html

Faced with the cancellation of her book tour, a writer turns to books that evoke a sense of place — and recommends 8 books that might take you somewhere, too.

03/19/2020

The Unsung Pioneer of Handwashing

"The first doctor to understand the importance of hygiene in stopping the spread of infectious disease was Ignaz Semmelweis, a Hungarian physician, who in the 1840s was working in the maternity department of Vienna’s General Hospital. At the time, the idea that the squalid conditions in hospitals played a role in spreading infection didn’t cross many doctors’ minds."

Dr. Lindsey Fitzharris (The Chirurgeon's Apprentice) writes about the history of handwashing in the medical community and the doctor who tried to change dirty habits.

In 19th-century Vienna, Ignaz Semmelweis fought to convince his fellow doctors that washing their hands could save patients’ lives.

03/05/2020

In Post-9/11 New York, a Newlywed Reckons With Her Own Lost Past

"Stevens’s writing proves that both time and technology are best understood in retrospect, sequences made logical long after each moment has passed. The novel has a romantic slowness, unfurling gracefully, little by little, to show how quickly the present gives way to the future, or concedes to the past."

Jessi Jezewska Stevens' debut novel The Exhibition of Persephone Q reviewed in The New York Times.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/05/books/review/jesse-jezewska-stevens-the-exhibition-of-persphone-q.html

Jessi Jezewska Stevens’s debut novel, “The Exhibition of Persephone Q,” features a woman who is unwittingly the central subject of a photography show.

03/04/2020

Blurred Lines: An Essayist’s Dispatches on Slippery States of Being

"Jordan Kisner displays an impressive range of narrative modes in Thin Places, bouncing nimbly between gravity (in her ethnography and her bird’s-eye philosophizing) and comic relief . . . In 'The Other City,' about the months she spent reporting on death investigations and autopsies in Cleveland, Kisner writes: 'Leaving the office every night, I’d get breathless rushes of reality.' That’s a lot like what these essays feel like, too: reminders of the weird in-between feeling of being alive."

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/03/books/review/thin-places-jordan-kisner.html

In “Thin Places,” the queer half-Mexican-American former Christian writer Jordan Kisner offers 13 views of the “in between.”

02/26/2020

Piled Bodies, Overflowing Morgues: Inside America’s Autopsy Crisis

Medical examiners provide crucial insights into public health and safety. What happens when we don’t have enough of them?

Jordan Kisner, author of THIN PLACES, writes for The New York Times.

Medical examiners provide crucial insights into public health and safety. What happens when we don’t have enough of them?

02/25/2020

It’s Time to Unfriend the Internet

Joanne McNeil's new book LURKING is out today! In it she charts the history of the internet through the experiences of the users. (The New York Times Books)

In “Lurking,” Joanne McNeil examines what it means to be a person online.

02/24/2020

This Offbeat Ghost Story Will Haunt You For Days

A writer whose father has just died begins to suspect the newly-vacated apartment above her might be haunted. Could it be, or is she simply experiencing a cruel trick of bereavement?

Read Laura van den Berg's "The Upstairs People" via O, The Oprah Magazine.

The upstairs neighbors moved out. So why are there still footsteps coming from their apartment?

02/24/2020

Poem: Prayer

What can we offer the child
at the border: a river of shoes,
her coat stitched with coins,
her father killed for his teeth,
her mother, sewing her
daughter’s future into a hem.

Keep reading Eliza Griswold's poem "Prayer" via The New York Times:

From Eliza Griswold’s searing “If Men, Then,” a book of inquiries into the hardest mysteries of human behavior.

02/23/2020

George Saunders, The Art of Fiction No. 245

"Saunders is easy to interview. He’s chatty, kind, quick to shoot down any glib analysis of his work, and free with an anecdote, often casting himself as a blunderer whose illusions land him in hot water. Back in his twenties, he played guitar in a country band, and at sixty he looks like a veteran Nashville sideman, with a tight beard and long red hair combed back from his forehead. His accent is working-class Chicagoan, slightly lilting. He often substitutes ya for you. The effect is that when he does say you, as he did when he told me, 'You have to let evil have broad shoulders,' it commands attention."

Benjamin Nugent, author of the forthcoming book FRATERNITY, interviews George Saunders for The Paris Review:

Photo by Chloe Aftel, courtesy of George Saunders My first meeting with George Saunders took place in his home of ten years, a ranch house in the Catskills. The house stood on fifteen acres of hilly woods, crisscrossed by narrow paths that he and his wife, the novelist Paula Saunders, had clea...

02/23/2020

[Essay] Ring of Fire, by Jordan Kisner | Harper's Magazine

"Nearly every day now, my phone rings from numbers unknown to me. The area codes are always Californian, and always different. The calls started from cities in or near Los Angeles: Culver City, Inglewood, Marina del Rey. Then, once I stopped picking them up, they’d come from farther north: Merced, Turlock, Patterson, Stockton."

THIN PLACES author Jordan Kisner writes about the best string of robocalls she ever got, via Harper's Magazine:

From "Phone Calls from the Apocalypse," an essay in the collection Thin Places, which will be published this month by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Nearly every day now, my phone rings from numbers unknown to me. The area codes are always Californian, and always different. The calls started from cities...

02/23/2020

11 New Books We Recommend This Week

INDELICACY by Amina Cain is one of The New York Times Books' recommended books of the week!

"An aspiring writer marries a man she meets while mopping the floor at the museum where she works. He seems like the ticket to the life she wants—and yet. 'You’re a little bit jealous of this woman until you realize how miserable she is,' writes Elisabeth Egan, who chose Cain’s novel for Group Text, the Book Review’s monthly column for readers and book clubs. 'She has exactly what she thought she wanted, but the next phase of her life unfolds hypnotically as INDELICACY morphs from a modern "Pygmalion" into a fable infused with an old-fashioned moral: Be careful what you wish for.' Cain’s small but mighty novel reads like a ghost story and packs the punch of a feminist classic."

Suggested reading from critics and editors at The New York Times.

02/22/2020

‘Congress at War’ and ‘When It Was Grand’ Review: The Great Emancipators

"In the beginning, Republicans stood far to the left of Democrats on most issues."

The Wall Street Journal reviews LeeAnna Keith's history of the Republican party, WHEN IT WAS GRAND.

Abraham Lincoln did not act alone, and very often did not act as boldly as his strongest supporters would have liked.

02/21/2020

Binge-worthy New Fiction, From Thrillers to Historical Epics

Vanity Fair recommends THE EXHIBITION OF PERSEPHONE Q by Jessi Jezewska Stevens!

"When a slightly aimless young woman living in post-9/11 New York is surprised to see herself in the untitled lead image of her former fiancé’s photography exhibit, she sets off on a quest to discover his motives—and, with help from interesting acquaintances, a larger truth."

Novels fit for a cross-country plane ride, plus items to sweeten the trip.

02/20/2020

Be Yourself Again

"And yet, in my writing, I am able to access parts of myself I thought I had lost."

Amina Cain, author of INDELICACY, writes about Jean Genet, authenticity, class dynamics, and domestic spaces for The Paris Review.

“In the past year I’ve become somewhat obsessed with the idea of authenticity.” Amina Cain revisits Jean Genet’s ‘The Maids’

02/19/2020

Book Deals: Week of February 17, 2020

Big news! We are thrilled to share that Pulitzer Prize winner Marilynne Robinson returns to the world of Gilead with her new book, JACK, which we will publish September 15!

FSG President and Robinson's editor Jonathan Galassi said: "The Gilead novels are about the dilemmas and promise of American history. They touch the deepest chords in our national character and resonate with our deepest feelings." (Publishers Weekly)

Marilynne Robinson and FSG go back to Gilead, Iowa, and more.

02/18/2020

How to Build Healthy Habits

"Dr. Wood notes that marketers are already experts in reducing friction, inducing us to spend more, for example, or order more food. That’s why Amazon has a 'one-click' button and fast-food companies make it easy to supersize. 'We’re just very influenced by how things are organized around us in ways that marketers understand and are exploiting, but people don’t exploit and understand in their own lives,' she said."

Wendy Wood, author of GOOD HABITS, BAD HABITS, shares her findings with The New York Times.

It’s not about willpower. Good habits happen when we set ourselves up for success. Our new challenge will show you how.

02/18/2020

Indelicacy

"I thought that being in the country would help me write, with its fields and its horses, but I don’t think I was meant for that. For the country, or for help."

Read an excerpt from Amina Cain's INDELICACY, via Literary Hub:

I thought that being in the country would help me write, with its fields and its horses, but I don’t think I was meant for that. For the country, or for help. Out in the street, candles light every…

02/17/2020

Jammy Tomato-Anchovy Sauce From Phyllis Grant Recipe on Food52

Try out one of the recipes from Phyllis Grant's forthcoming book, EVERYTHING IS UNDER CONTROL!

As Phyllis Grant writes, "This is not an ordinary, pour-from-the-jar sauce. This is a far more versatile, concentrated sauce base that I love to use in a zillion applications. I cook the tomatoes down for several hours, until they reduce by about half, resulting in a jam-like consistency. This is especially satisfying to make in the middle of winter when good tomatoes are nowhere to be found." (Food52)

A jammy, concentrated, umami-rich tomato sauce perfect for your pastas, pizzas, spread on sandwiches or any way you want to brighten up your winter day.

02/16/2020

Vivian Gornick and the Revolution That Won’t End

"On foot, Gornick is a fast walker, slightly tilted forward, contained. A woman not lost in thought, but powered by it. On the page, she is the warmest narrator in American life-writing of the past half century, save for perhaps James Baldwin. Like Baldwin—or White or Mendelsohn—Gornick’s work hasn’t just traced the orbits of American culture, it has reconstituted the air through which she paces by questioning its assumptions." (Literary Hub)

For the past four decades, Seventh Avenue in lower Manhattan has been a thoroughfare of American essayists. In the late 1990s, I’d often pass Daniel Mendelsohn there, enjoying his afternoon stroll …

02/16/2020

Six Western Landscape Novels

S. M. Hulse's new book EDEN MINE is set in northwest Montana, in a small town abutting two mines that were once the economic engine of the region, but have since closed down. The Montana landscape itself shapes the book's characters.

Here, Hulse discusses six novels in which the Western landscape also plays an integral role. In some of these books the West is romanticized, in others it is presented as harsh and foreboding. Together, they show the range of ways in which the Western landscape has been depicted on the page over time, and speak to the tensions between the mythologies and realities of the West that have shaped the people and characters–like Hulse’s–who inhabit it today.

Eden Mine author S. M. Hulse recommends 6 novels of the West.

02/15/2020

Go, Team

There was a woman, and everyone watched. Including me. We were at the fields where the kids play soccer. You know?”

“I’m there three times a week.”

“The place is surrounded by woods.”

“I know. Three days a week. No joke. Were the kids playing?”

“That’s why we noticed her. She walked across the field mid-game like she didn’t even see the rest of us and disappeared into the woods. The fireflies had started. Maybe 40 minutes before dark? The game must’ve been close to ending. In fact, it did end soon after.”

“I was there,” another mother says. “I saw her go.”

Keep reading Samantha Hunt's new story in The Atlantic:

A short story