Lots of solid long-form author interviews up: Birnbaum takes on Edwidge Danticat and Stephen Elliott, and Laura Miller talks with Neal Stephenson.

Another great Philip K. Dick novel is destined for cinematic ruin. Keanu “Whoa!” Reeves will star in A Scanner Darkly. Hopefully, director Richard Linklater won’t have him speak that much, although given the talkiness of his other films, I fear the worst. And, besides, who can forget how awful Johnny Mnemonic was?

Chick Lit has a bigger problem than what you might expect: where are the black women?

What makes the wiping of prison imate hard drives more pernicious is that it comes as inmate Barbara Parsons Lane is set to win tonight’s PEN/Faulkner First Amendment award. If prisoners were not allowed to write, we wouldn’t have the words of Eldrige Cleaver, O. Henry, Jean Genet, or Marquis de Sade to stack on our bookshelves.

The review starts, “If this novel did not boast the name of Alice Walker, who won acclaim some two decades ago with ‘The Color Purple,’ it’s hard to imagine how it could have been published,” and gets very close to Dale Peck territory. Someone give Michiko a hug. Or maybe attending a cuddle party will calm her down. (via Maud)