Robert Alter: The Hebrew Bible
A single scholar's twenty-year translation argues that the Hebrew Bible was written by poets first, and that English versions since the King James have muted the music to make room for doctrine.
Arts, Culture, Books & Publishing
The latest arts, culture, books & publishing journalism from the publications of the VUGA Enterprises Network — refreshed around the clock. Every headline opens the full story at its source.
Page 3 of 10 · Updated 19 Sep 2026, 06:23 UTC
How a library card unlocks free admission to more than 100 New York museums
Culture Pass lets cardholders of New York's three public library systems reserve free entry to museums, gardens and historical sites across the city.
How Does Watercolour Granulation Work?
A guide to the speckled, mineral-flecked textures that appear when certain pigments settle unevenly across the page, and how illustrators put the effect to work.
How Book Advances Actually Work, And Why So Many Never Earn Out
A publisher's upfront payment is a bet against future royalties, split into installments and measured against a recoupment target most books never hit.
How Museums Actually Acquire Art: Committee Votes, Dollar Thresholds, and the Rules on Deaccessioning
Behind every new painting on a museum wall sits a chain of curatorial recommendations, dollar-tiered approvals, and — when a museum sells instead of buys — an increasingly strict rule on where the proceeds can go.
Kodachrome Only Became Kodachrome After It Left the Camera
Rated ASA 12 and processable only by its maker, Kodak's first modern color transparency film built its legend on constraints that also guaranteed its ending.
The Tiny Federal Slice That Nearly Broke America's Libraries
Local property taxes cover 85 percent of what public libraries spend. 4 percent that comes from Washington is small enough to overlook — until 2025 showed what happens when it briefly disappears.
Five Readers, Six Hundred Books: How the National Book Award Actually Picks a Longlist
The prize's glamour hides a blunt mechanism: a handful of judges, a submission fee, and a summer spent reading everything a publisher was willing to enter.
How to Buy E-Books From Independent Bookstores Instead of Amazon
org routes e-book sales to local indie stores, but Kindle still isn't supported and Kobo compatibility keeps slipping.
What Is EPUB Accessibility, and Why Does It Matter for Your Ebook?
1 is the W3C standard behind whether a screen reader can actually make sense of your book — here's what it requires and how it fits together with the EPUB 3 file format.
How the National Book Awards Longlists Actually Get Made
Only publishers can enter a book, and last year's fiction longlist alone was picked from 434 submissions.
How Bushwick Open Studios Turns a Neighborhood Into a Gallery
Every September, hundreds of working studios across Bushwick throw their doors open for free — here's how the twenty-year-old, artist-run weekend actually works.
AI Dating Pushes Some Dead Sea Scrolls a Century Older
A new radiocarbon-and-machine-learning study puts several biblical manuscripts from Qumran closer to their authors' own lifetimes than paleography ever allowed.
Armory Show pushes 2026 edition to late September, expands Caribbean focus
The fair's VIP preview moves to September 24 to avoid clashing with Frieze Seoul, with roughly 230 galleries and two new Caribbean-focused sections.
Laura Boswell Carves Her Print Blocks Away to Capture Scotland's Wild Coastline
The Dumfries and Galloway printmaker builds her landscapes in reduction linocut, a technique that destroys the block itself as each new layer of colour goes down.
How Much Freelance Book Editing Really Costs in 2026
8 cents a word, with copyediting and proofreading running lower — the numbers authors need before they hire an editor.
How the Buyer's Premium Works at Art Auctions, and Why It Keeps Climbing
Sotheby's and Christie's have both raised their entry-level buyer's premiums since September 2025, reshaping what collectors of lower-priced lots actually pay above the hammer price.
How to Push Tri-X Two Stops Without Ruining It
Kodak's own development chart, plus one photographer's roll pushed too far past it, mark where a two-stop push to EI 1600 actually pays off.
How Public Libraries Are Actually Funded
Washington barely touches the budget. Here's who really pays for the local library.
Where to Start With Thomas Merton
A Trappist monk who wrote more than seventy books left no obvious entry point. Here is one, in order.
The Pocket Revolution: How Cheap Paperbacks Rewrote the Rules of American Reading
The 25-cent book did not arrive by accident. It took a failed subscription club, a wartime logistics program, a contractual loophole, and one underpaid editorial assistant to build the format now taken for granted.
How to Borrow Library eBooks on a Kobo eReader
Kobo built library lending straight into the firmware on most current models — here's the built-in setup, the device and country limits, and the Adobe Digital Editions workaround for everyone else.
What the European Accessibility Act Means for Your Ebooks
A 2019 EU law now requires many digital products, including ebooks, to be accessible by design. Here's what indie authors and small publishers actually need to do.
Why Literary Agents Never Charge to Read Your Manuscript
The field's own ethics code bans reading fees outright — here's what agents can charge for, and what a query actually needs to work.
How an Emerging NYC Artist Gets Free Materials From the City
Materials for the Arts runs a free warehouse in Long Island City stocked with donated fabric, paint, and furniture — here's who actually qualifies to shop it, and how an artist without a nonprofit gets in.
The VUGA Enterprises Newsroom aggregates headlines and short excerpts from the newspapers and magazines of the VUGA Enterprises Network. Every headline links to the full story on the publishing site. Part of the VUGA Network.