The New York Times’ Virginia Heffernan has a book proposal out to publishers just in time for the Frankfurt Book Fair, via her literary agent, John Brockman. The former Times TV critic wants to write about her second love, the Internet, which she has covered for The Times Magazine since 2007 in a column called the Medium.

In the proposal, a copy of which was obtained by the Transom, Ms. Heffernan’s book...

Jeff Koons and the British curator Norman Rosenthal are working on a book together that the Wylie Agency is currently shopping to publishers at the Frankfurt Book Fair. The book will be called The Confessions of Jeff Koons, and will take the form of an extended conversation between the two longtime friends.

The Wylie Agency hopes to see Confessions published in the fall of 2010, in coordination with the release of a film...

British-Indian novelist Salman Rushdie was one of the first to arrive at the National Arts Awards at Cipriani 42nd Street on Monday, Oct. 5. Known as a champion of freedom of expression, the author ruminated on the current challenges faced by the world of the arts, and the particular struggle of the written word.

“It’s very tough right now wherever you look with the arts,” he told the Transom, citing Conde Nast’s closing...

The unseasonable chill on the night of Thursday, Oct. 1, posed a sartorial challenge for those attending the premiere of Nora and Delia Ephron’s new play, Love, Loss and What I Wore, based on the book by Ilene Beckerman: a paean to sartorial challenges and the life lessons they inspire. “This was not the first all-black outfit I tried on tonight,” the elder Ephron sister (Nora) told the Transom.

The production, which the...

A decade ago, Rory Heather Green, a driven 26-year-old television producer from Atlanta with a broadcast journalism degree from Boston University, attended the 46th birthday party of Elie Tahari—a fashion designer known for his tailored lady suits, and a noted bachelor—and fell in love. But before she could marry Tahari the person, she had to agree to work for Tahari the brand.

“He said, ‘My business is my life and my life is my...

Columbia English professor James Shapiro’s undergraduate seminar, “The Book Review,” which teaches skills necessary for students to make it as freelance literary critics, is on indefinite hiatus.

“There are intellectual reasons to teach the course again,” Professor Shapiro wrote in an email, when the Transom asked if a rumor that he’d discontinued the class was true. “But what’s no longer there is the possibility of training a generation of book reviewers, since, as you...

The best of autumn's art, classical music, opera, jazz, pop, dance, theater, movies, television and...

In the aftermath of the press parade for The September Issue, during which creative director Grace Coddington emerged as the true talent behind Vogue, it is difficult not to speculate how long before she gets a book deal.

Turns out she already did a 400-page illustrated tome titled Grace: Thirty Years of Fashion at Vogue, published in 2002 by Edition 7L, an imprint, co-owned by Karl Lagerfeld, of the London-based publisher Steidl books, featuring...