The poet Amanda Gorman, the nation’s first Youth Poet Laureate, has been chosen to read at President Biden’s inauguration. The title of her inauguration poem is “The Hill We Climb.”
Sally Rooney has sold her third novel to Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Beautiful World, Where Are You will be published in September 2021. According to FSG, the novel is about four people in Ireland who “are still young—but life is catching up with them. They desire each other, they delude each other, they get together, they break apart. . . . Are they standing in the last lighted room before the darkness, bearing witness to something? Will they find a way to believe in a beautiful world?”
At the New Yorker, author Masha Gessen ponders Joan Didion’s line “We tell ourselves stories in order to live,” and uses it as a launchpad to write about the second impeachment of Donald Trump. Gessen argues that the Senate trial of Trump should be approached as “a truth-finding mission rather than a punitive undertaking.” To accomplish this, Gessen points out, we will need the support of president-elect Joe Biden. “If impeachment is allowed to fizzle, or even to proceed in the most efficient way possible,” they continue, “that will guarantee nearly half of Americans will watch the process without having to challenge the notion that the Democrats are simply out to get Trump.”
The hacker who archived all the public posts on Parler, tells Vice: “I hope that it can be used to hold people accountable and to prevent more death.”
Ursula K. Le Guin has been chosen to appear on a US postage stamp. The stamp will feature a painting of the author by Donato Giancola. In the background is a scene from Le Guin’s novel The Left Hand of Darkness. “In it, an envoy from Earth named Genly Ai escapes from a prison camp on the snowy planet of Gethen with a disgraced Gethenian politician.” The stamp will be released later this year.