SMALL TOWN GIRLS: A Writer’s Memoir, By Jayne Anne Phillips Most fiction writers have given so much of their own experiences to their characters that, after long careers, they are rarely inspired to become late-life autobiographers. Over the years, however, many are likely to have published a variety of nonfiction pieces — personal essays, talks,…
As cellist of the Nash Ensemble and the Emerson Quartet, Paul Watkins has immersed himself in almost all the chamber music Beethoven wrote. Now he brings those years of experience to his first recording of the cello sonatas. He approached the pianist Alessio Bax for this project after hearing him play the Moonlight Sonata, and…
W hen Niall Horan left his house in Los Angeles on a recent Sunday afternoon, there were a few hundred people in line at Olive and James Cafe Tea, a quaint coffee shop on Melrose Avenue. By the time he pulled up, the queue stretched around the block. There isn’t a matcha or tiramisu latte…
Sarah Wynn-Williams’s memoir documenting her seven years working at Facebook opens, unexpectedly, with a shark attack. The New Zealander was 13 years old and swimming in the sea when the shark bit her torso and shook her from side to side. She lived to tell the tale, but her near-death experience awakened in her a desire…
Luke Kennard, writer This is a really good year for new fiction. I don’t think anyone writes about contemporary Englishness as astutely, mercilessly and affectionately as Claire Powell, and her latest novel, All In, puts her perfectly observed characters in the pressure cooker of an all-inclusive holiday. It’s a kind of meta-beach read, and I…
Amyl and The Sniffers snared a hattrick at the 2026 APRA Music Awards, presented Wednesday night (April 29) in Sydney, while INXS was feted with the lifetime achievement award. Explore See latest videos, charts and news For the past year, no Australian act could touch Amyl And The Sniffers on the awards circuit. It was…
Twenty years ago Andy Sachs, an eager journalist fresh out of Northwestern University, stepped into the office of the most fashionable devil in movie history, the Runway magazine editor Miranda Priestly. Since its premiere in 2006, “The Devil Wears Prada” has been, unironically, one of my personal favorites. I’m not the only one; the comedy…
In an email interview, she confessed the Marilynne Robinson-sized hole in her reading, and the book her high school boyfriend would be glad she got to. SCOTT HELLER What’s the last great book you read? I finally read “Bel Canto” and I just — ugh! — luxuriated in it. What a pleasure. What books are…
Rears & Vices by E.M. Caro Spring is the ideal time of year for a salt-crusted, grog-drenched pirate romance — and Caro’s REARS & VICES (Tides & Troth, 367 pp., paperback, $18.99) was everything I wanted. Our men have some impressive Age of Sail names: Everard Anderson de Anglada is a British Navy captain on…
Spotify’s Top 50 chart leaves no doubt that the dominance of English-language songs is becoming a thing of the past. The chart now includes tracks in no fewer than 16 languages, and the presence of non-English songs is growing at breakneck speed, having doubled since 2020. ADVERTISEMENT ADVERTISEMENT For many people, stepping outside English, especially…
