Transcendent Kingdom is Yaa Gyasi’s powerful follow-up to Homegoing

Transcendent Kingdom, Yaa Gyasi’s stunning follow-up to her award-winning novel Homegoing is a powerful, raw, intimate, deeply layered story about a Ghanaian family in Alabama.   Transcendent Kingdom Gifty is a sixth-year PhD candidate in neuroscience at the Stanford University School of Medicine studying reward-seeking behavior in mice and the neural circuits of depression and

Read more

Sir Ken Robinson: 1950 – 2020

Viking/Penguin shares the sad news of the passing of Sir Ken Robinson, internationally recognized leader in the development of creativity, innovation, and human potential, and author of such bestselling books as The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything, Creative Schools,  and You, Your Child, and School: Navigate Your Way to the Best Education. Robinson died on Friday,

Read more

Reading Poe During a Pandemic

J. Gerald Kennedy is Boyd Professor of English Emeritus at Louisiana State University and a past president of the Poe Studies Association. Editor of the Penguin Classic The Portable Edgar Allan Poe, here he makes a case for Poe’s continued relevancy, 200 years after he was originally published. Why read Poe? And why now? For

Read more

Cornell Professor Kate Manne on the Pursuit of Gender Justice

Contributed by Kate Manne, author of Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women CW: This post contains descriptions of misogynistic and sexual violence On Friday May 23, 2014, I was an assistant professor just finishing up my first year of teaching at Cornell University. Scrolling through my Facebook feed, I saw reports of a horrible crime

Read more

Riverhead Recommends: Black Voices and Stories

Founded in 1994, Riverhead Books publishes bestselling literary fiction and quality nonfiction. Throughout its history, Riverhead has been dedicated to publishing extraordinary groundbreaking, unique writers including Danielle Evans, Danzy Senna, and James McBride. Collected here are some works from Black writers published by Riverhead. Their stories articulate the Black experience in America and give voice

Read more

A Monthly Update from Penguin Classics

Because what you read matters. Subscribe to the Penguin Classics Newsletter here. Black Lives Matter. Black Voices Matter. Black Stories Matter. This month we’re sharing a few of the works by Black authors we have been learning from lately. Let us know on social media the Black voices and stories you’re reading this month (we’re @PenguinClassics everywhere). Nonfiction—History: The

Read more

Megha Majumdar’s debut novel A BURNING is an urgent story of class, fate, corruption, and justice

A Burning is a novel about three unforgettable characters who seek to rise—to the middle class, to political power, to fame in the movies—and find their lives entangled in the wake of a catastrophe in contemporary India. Jivan is a Muslim girl from the slums, determined to move up in life, who is accused of

Read more

DISABILITY VISIBILITY is an urgent collection of contemporary essays by disabled people.

Activist Alice Wong presents a galvanizing collection of thirty-seven essays by disabled people just in time for the thirtieth anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century celebrates and documents disability culture in the now. From Harriet McBryde Johnson’s account of her debate with Peter Singer over her

Read more

The MIT Press Joins Penguin Random House Publisher Services

Today, July 1, 2020, Penguin Random House Publisher Services (PRHPS) will begin a multi-year sales and distribution agreement with the MIT Press, one of the largest and most distinguished university presses in the world.   Established in 1962, the MIT Press is a leading publisher of books on science, technology, art, social science, and design.

Read more

Bryan Washington Wins the 2020 Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize

Bryan Washington has been named the 2020 Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize winner for his story collection LOT. In LOT, Washington explores his hometown of Houston—a sprawling, diverse microcosm of America—where the son of a black mother and a Latino father is coming of age. He’s working at his family’s restaurant, weathering his brother’s blows,

Read more