Han Kang Wins the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature

Created by Humans Partners with the Authors Guild

Whether sucking up copyrighted works into LLMs is legal is very much in question. If it turns out that it isn’t, then a process and terms for anyone who would be OK licensing their work to AI companies will be have some takers. I have no sense right now what even the payouts could be for these types of deals for individual authors; several publications have signed major deals, but those represent the works of hundreds if not thousands of writers. Prediction: it will be more than AI companies want to pay and much less than writers want.

I probably have read more John Gierach books over the last five years than those of any other author. I discovered Gierach deep in Covid and quickly listened my way through his extensive backlist. His avuncular, expert, and sharply self-effacing chronicles of fly-fishing were both travelogues of creeks and rivers and an evolving rumination on change, aging, and living a good life. If you or someone you know are interested in giving him a go, I recommend starting with Standing in a River, Waving a Stick, whose title should give you some sense of what you are in for.

I took a crack at making a list of the 50 U.S. writers who I think the best chance of winning a Literature Nobel some day. There might be, what 2-3 U.S. laureates that will win in the four or so decades I might expect to be around. I will consider it a successful exercise if I get one of them right.