Sally Rooney can no longer safely enter the UK.

By Brittany Allen

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September 18, 2025, 12:11pm

Sally Rooney, the iconic Millennial bard, can no longer safely enter the United Kingdom for fear of arrest.

The author behind Intermezzo and Normal People recently received English flack for her support of Palestine Action. And today, The Guardian reports that Rooney “could not travel to collect a literary prize this week over concerns that she may be arrested if she enters the UK.”

Rooney’s latest novel, Intermezzo, received a Sky Arts Award. Given by the Sky Group—self-described as one of Europe’s premier entertainment companies—the award recognizes “the absolute best of British and Irish arts and culture.” Statues were presented last night for high achievers in dance, film, comedy, theatre, and literature.

Rooney’s editor accepted her literature award by proxy, and read a statement on her behalf. “I wish that I could be with you this evening to accept the honor in person,” she told supporters, “but because of my support for non-violent anti-war protest, I’m advised that I can no longer safely enter the UK without potentially facing arrest.”

Rooney got caught in the political crossfire after pledging to donate earnings from her books and BBC adaptations to Palestine Action.

The British government classified Palestine Action as a terrorist organization in July, over loud protest from the pro-Palestinian movement. Formed in 2020, the group specializes in direct action campaigns. They target arms manufacturers with an eye to “preventing military targets in the UK from facilitating gross abuses of international law.” Tactics include destruction or defacement of property—like these Israel-bound fighter jets.

Since the new designation, it’s been illegal to be a member or voice support for PA’s actions. And last month, following protests, Downing Street came down especially hard on the group’s supporters. Metropolitan Police said the author could be “jailed for up to 14 years” if she were to make good on her promised support.

As the International Bar Association has pointed out, the government’s clampdown is historically unprecedented here, and marks a frightening shift in the redefinition of “terrorism” under UK law.

Palestine Action’s leaders are mounting a legal appeal to the proscription decision, which the government is obliged to hear. But as the case works its way through the systems, supporters will stay in a legal limbo. That could mean Rooney won’t be welcome on the island for a while.

The author, meanwhile, stays committed to Palestine. As she told supporters yesterday, “I want….to reiterate my belief in the dignity and beauty of all human life, and my solidarity with the people of Palestine. Thank you.”

Why is Barnes and Noble buying up another indie chain?

By Brittany Allen

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September 17, 2025, 12:47pm

Barnes & Noble, former sworn enemy to the indie bookstore, may be shaking up its business model. Under the leadership of CEO James Daunt, the company has been using its unlikely second act to bail out struggling indies. Most recently, Books Inc., a California chain.

Books Inc. is considered a community pillar, having “weathered the Civil War, two world wars, the Great Depression,” gold rushes, and a certain global pandemic. But the 174-year-old Bay Area institution filed for bankruptcy earlier this year. Citing a love for “remarkable bookstore chains,” B&N swept in this month with a 3.25 million acquisition plan, and reassurances that nothing would change on the day-to-day if the sale goes through.

If the proposal is approved in bankruptcy court, Goliath has pledged to honor David’s integrity. B&N will allow the store to retain its name and “independent identity,” while preserving the company’s seven locations.

Management has also assured current employees that inventory curation, staffing, and leadership will remain under local jurisdiction. Even as the sale will grant Books Inc. “access to Barnes & Noble’s distribution network and upgraded technology.” According to the San Francisco Standard, customers will even be able to keep their current loyalty points.

This echoes a similar play. Last year, B&N acquired Tattered Cover, the beloved Colorado bookstore chain that filed for bankruptcy after several years of very public mismanagement. After that chain was sold, the black hats swept in—and apparently touched very little. There was much rejoicing.

But against the Supreme Court, I’d argue that corporations are not people. So it’s a little hard to believe these sales are purely altruistic. Why is B&N getting into the indie racket? And what could it mean for readers like you?

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Allison Smith in Modern Retail observed the irony—that B&N, “once maligned as the big-box retailer that nearly killed the independent bookstore…is now fashioning itself as their savior.” Last year, my colleague Drew Broussard also considered “the enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend response” to the Tattered Cover acquisition, in a thoughtful op-ed.

It’s true that B&N has seen a funny turn of fortunes. After Amazon emerged as the true Sauron of the book business, and B&N itself filed for bankruptcy in 2011, the company experienced a turn of public opinion. No longer the Joe Foxes come to crush The Shops Around the Corner, we started to see those big empty buildings as peers in solidarity. Just another third space under threat.

But a lot of this rebranding is the direct result of James Daunt’s (formerly of Daunt Books) shrewd PR work. As Publishers Weekly and Smith have reported, since taking the reins in 2019, Daunt “has increasingly borrowed from the playbook of independents themselves” by pushing to decentralize buying decisions, empowering local managers, and running each B&N store with its own character.

This “playbook” casts the acquisitions of beloved local indies in something of a different light. Not that Daunt’s been cagey about this. The behemoth-does-bespoke strategy, in which a large chain tailors its outlets to a community to echo a spirit (if not a letter) of indie-ness, has been successful across the pond. Especially at Waterstones, the UK mega book chain that Daunt stewarded before taking this job.

And though the CEO hastens to reassure skeptics that indie buy-outs are not an empire-building maneuver (“This is very much not Barnes & Noble roaming the countryside, looking for great indie bookstore chains and acquiring them”), a sprinkle of healthy suspicion seems in order.

As Drew noted re: the Tattered Cover acquisition, a big box corporation is a big box corporation, no matter how indie its insides. And “the distinction between B&N and indie bookstore is an important one to maintain.”

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“By absorbing struggling indie chains while preserving their identities—and backing them with national resources, Barnes & Noble is positioning itself not as a big-box competitor to independents but as a steward of bookstores that may otherwise vanish,” Smith writes, in counterpoint. Which, fair.

We obviously want more bookstores. Not fewer. Bookstores are the best. And if beloved, centuries-old cornerstone bookstores get to stay open care of B&N, so much the better.

But I can’t help but feel some nostalgia for the old You’ve Got Mail plot. If only for the pleasure of fighting a CEO who actually seems to value the product he sells.

Speaking of? B&N sales have been steadily growing under Daunt’s leadership. And the company plans to open 60 more stores next year.

Now where they’ll be and what they’ll be called, we’ll just have to see.

The doctors are fighting! Michael Crichton’s estate is taking The Pitt to court.

By James Folta

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September 17, 2025, 11:41am

Is Emmy award winning show The Pitt ripping off ER? Michael Crichton’s estate is claiming that it has, and a judge has given the go-ahead for the issue to go to trial. Scrub up, lawyers.

This is about more than just the fact that both shows follow hunky emergency room doctors, star Noah Wyle, and are produced by John Wells. Sherri Crichton, Michael Crichton’s widow and the head of the production company that protects Crichton’s estate, claims she was approached in 2022 about an ER reboot. She claims that this planned reboot became The Pitt, which cut her and the estate out. As per the late Crichton’s contract with Warner Brothers, he or his estate has to be paid and allowed to creatively weigh in on any reboots or spin-offs of ER. But Sherri claims that when negotiations didn’t pan out, the re-ER-boot became The Pitt, “without any attribution or compensation for Crichton and his heirs.”

Vulture and The Times have longer write ups on the nitty gritty of the complaint and the supposed, planned reboot. Apparently the pitch was pretty similar to what The Pitt became, so much so that the Crichton estate claims it amounted to a mere “rebrand.”

The folks at The Pitt are contesting this, though they can’t say much given the ongoing litigation. Actor Wyle and producer Wells have said their show “is not in any way related to ER”, citing specifically how different the main doctors are. Wyle also said that he’s “profoundly sad and disappointed” by this legal tangle, and afraid that “this taints the legacy.”

WB tried to have the estate’s motion dismissed, but a judge ruled that the case can go on, saying that “the Court cannot find Plaintiffs claims to be totally meritless.” I like to imagine the judge got to binge a lot of TV while putting together this ruling—“I just have to make sure I’m getting this right,” while all the other judges are rolling their eyes.

For now, no trial date has been set, so we’ll have to get comfy in the waiting room.

3 Nobel laureates are among the writers urging France to resume evacuations from Gaza.

By Dan Sheehan

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September 16, 2025, 2:15pm

Nobel Laureates Annie Ernaux, Abdulrazak Gurnah, and J.M.G. Le Clézio are among a group of twenty prominent writers who have signed a public letter to President Emmanuel Macron urging the immediate resumption of France’s evacuation program for Palestinian scholars, artists, and writers in Gaza.

Since its founding in 2017, the PAUSE program has provided visas and institutional support to hundreds of at-risk scholars and artists from conflict zones around the world, including Palestine. Significantly, the program allows Palestinian laureates from Gaza to continue their work while preserving their right to return to Palestine, as they would be arriving on talent visas and not as refugees.

The letter condemns the French government’s suspension of PAUSE and related evacuations from Gaza following a single case in which a student admitted to Sciences Po Lille was accused of sharing antisemitic statements. On 1 August 2025, Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot declared that “no evacuation of any kind” would take place until further notice, a decision which left many approved applicants and their families—already accepted by French institutions—stranded amid famine and bombardment.

“Suspending a humanitarian program on the basis of one case amounts to collective punishment,” the signatories write, stressing that France must uphold its humanist commitments while Palestinians face what the UN and almost every major human rights group in the world has described as a genocide. They argue that PAUSE, while limited, remains one of the few existing lifelines and protects not only individuals but Palestinian cultural and intellectual life, threatened by the deliberate destruction of universities, schools, and cultural centers.

Other signatories of the letter include Alain Damasio, Mathias Énard, Anne Enright, Didier Eribon, Isabella Hammad, Kapka Kassabova, Karim Kattan, Rashid Khalidi, Naomi Klein, Deborah Levy, Édouard Louis, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Max Porter, Sally Rooney, Leïla Slimani, and Madeleine Thien.

The writers urge Macron to lift the suspension immediately and restore PAUSE as a model of protection for endangered voices. “We hope that France can follow through on its proclaimed humanist values,” they write, “and that the French government will make the right choice and resume PAUSE.”

Good news! Harper’s Bazaar is launching a literary newsletter.

By Brittany Allen

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September 16, 2025, 11:33am

For the next eight weeks, Harper’s Bazaar will sponsor a new literary newsletter from Kaitlyn Greenidge.

Greenidge, the novelist behind Libertie and We Love You, Charlie Freeman and the excellent thinker behind pieces like these, isn’t new to the newsletter game. Her own Substack, “What It is I Think I’m Doing,” has been serving up “cultural criticism at the intersection of pop culture, the archives and Black womanhood” for the past five years.

Her Harper’s letter (yes, let this be a reclaiming) will go a little more local.

In every issue of “A Closer Read,” Greenidge will highlight a single book. Early pieces promise to look at “writing as embroidery with Joyce Carol Oates, the wonders of taxidermy with Susan Orlean, and Angela Flournoy’s modern classic of Black millennial angst, The Wilderness.”

As the Substack model continues to balloon, major publications like Harper’s Bazaar are going all in on newsletters. “A Closer Read” joins a raft of compadres, like The New Yorker’s sturdy “Books and Culture” vertical, or The Point’s philosophical “Forms of Life.”

The Cut re-launched a fun literary letter last October. “Book Gossip” aims to “track reading trends and controversies, highlight great works in translation,” and “point you to the writing making waves on the internet.” Edited by Jasmine Vojdani, it’s aimed at both publishing insiders and general readers.

Happily, Greenidge’s project is even more specific than all of these. “A Closer Read” will occupy a fresh intersection in newsletterland—at least as it’s been done so far by large publications. By focusing on a single book or idea, each letter can sit somewhere between a personal essay and a larger lit-world analysis. And as any librarian or bookseller can tell you, meeting new books through one specific voice has always been the best way to do it.

Greenidge puts her aims even more humbly. Describing an ill-fated attempt to imitate art, she instructs fans to “think of this newsletter as a toast to the curiosity and literary joys that might lead you to order a Scotch and milk, in a dark and musty bar, to try to get closer to what you read and loved on a page.”

Sounds pretty sweet to me.

Today you can read the very first edition of “A Closer Read,” featuring an interview with Arundhati Roy about her memoir Mother Mary Comes to Me. New installments will land every Tuesday.

The curious can sign up here.