iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Sarah Weinman @sarahweinman.com · 29/09/2026

Good morning, I am very pleased to announce that my one and only paperback event for WITHOUT CONSENT is a joint launch on Thursday, November 5 with the novelist Donna Freitas, whose new book WOLVES OF SUMMER publishes on the same day. Details/registration link here: www.92ny.org/event/donna-...

92NY

Donna Freitas and Sarah Weinman: Wolves of Summer and Without Consent

05 NOV THURSDAY
7:30 PM ET/IN PERSON and STREAMING

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Sarah Weinman @sarahweinman.com · 24/09/2026

It's so funny to me that Robert Pattinson is reaping praise for playing him as a mad figure in PRIMETIME and meanwhile, this series deal just got announced

Publishers Marketplace Deal Report
Category: Fiction: Thriller
September 21, 2026
untitled series By Chris Hansen
Imprint: Simon & Schuster
Emmy Award-winning investigative reporter and host of To Catch a Predator and Have a Seat with Chris Hansen, Chris Hansen's untitled series about a legendary television investigator who built his career confronting predators, only to find himself and his family hunted by a man he once exposed, to Stuart Roberts at Simon & Schuster, in an exclusive submission, in a two-book deal, by Matt Latimer at Javelin (world).

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Sarah Weinman @sarahweinman.com · 16/09/2026

I had to cut the anecdote about the shock jock Alan Berg for space reasons, but it's worth posting here:

Kaplan herself proved to be touchy when Denver radio shock jock Alan Berg called her during one of his programs, introduced her as “a vile human being,” praised Nancy Kissinger, and after she hung up, continued to berate her on the air. A barrage of complaints, including from Kaplan’s boyfriend, led to Berg’s suspension for a few days.

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Sarah Weinman @sarahweinman.com · 02/09/2026

This is his book, it's very good! sutherlandhousebooks.com/product/anvi...

Cover for ANVILS, MALLETS, and DYNAMITE: The Unauthorized Biography of Looney Tunes by Jaime Weinman

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Sarah Weinman @sarahweinman.com · 15/08/2026

Even the serial killers think he's a liar

Living serial killers also allege that Berry-Dee invents quotes, which he attributes to them in his books. “They are complete fabrications by CBD,” says Kenneth Bianchi, now Anthony D’Amato, the convicted US serial killer widely known as the Hillside Strangler. “He is one very twisted pathological liar. I never, on paper, in email or tape, ‘confessed’ those things to him.”

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Sarah Weinman @sarahweinman.com · 10/07/2026

Tl;dr AI is coming for romance scammers, too

Fake relationships seem to be the grim future, with dating app CEOs like Whitney Wolfe Herd excitedly predicting that people using their products will use AI personas before human contact begins. Articles about people falling in love with chatbots and dying of preventable conditions (including suicide)— or even committing murder—after extensive chatbot use, keep proliferating. What’s a romance scammer to do when they, too, might be training the tool that replaces them? The answer, at least for some scammers in Southeast Asia, is to go all in, using AI as their English interlocutor with would-be victims.

The Yahoo Boys makes clear that there are no winners in this global sucker’s game. Those in Western countries who are scammed for years sometimes lose astronomical sums of money and end up with ruined lives. But the scammers’ lives are also ruined—by persistent societal corruption, inequality, malnutrition, and the lack of real opportunities to better themselves other than the quick lure of temporary enrichment often followed by a swifter descent into drugs, poverty, and additional instability. The reality is that the outcome was rigged long before the players were ever born, and will stay rigged long after they die.

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Sarah Weinman @sarahweinman.com · 30/05/2026

It was a deliberate choice, too: www.nytimes.com/2026/05/10/b...

You say Natalie is a “fundamentalist Christian.” Talk to me about why you decided to keep her denomination vague.

There are two decisions I made. Number one is that she doesn’t have a specific type of Christianity. And number two, her relationship to her religion kind of moves in and out. She is not someone who is attached to the doctrine. She doesn’t understand scripture. Her relationship is very transactional.

I feel like I’ve spent the last decade watching people in power try on and then take off elements of religious strategy to see what works best. I became obsessed with the idea that fundamentalism is pretty consistent for women across not just every thread of Christianity, but every religion. There is so much more in common between fundamentalists than there is separating them. A specific thread of Christianity would really just be more distracting. And it would imply more of an intelligence than Natalie has about her own religion.

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Sarah Weinman @sarahweinman.com · 27/05/2026

Truly and utterly grateful to @asjahq.bsky.social for awarding WITHOUT CONSENT its 2026 Biography/History Book Award. Thank you to the judges, and congrats to all the winners and finalists in the other book categories! www.asja.org/what-we-do/a...

ASJA 2026 Award Winner

The 2026 Biography/History Book Award

Sarah Weinman, "Without Consent"

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Sarah Weinman @sarahweinman.com · 19/05/2026

Olga Tokarczuk has issued a statement about her recent AI comments (they were translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones and sent via her US publisher, Riverhead)

Statement from Olga Tokarczuk (via her US publisher Riverhead):

Like any other conversation, remarks made before a live audience at a public event can be incorrectly understood.

I did not write my forthcoming book – to be published in fall 2026 in Polish - either using AI or with anyone else. For several decades I have written alone.

I state briefly and firmly:

1. I make use of artificial intelligence on the same principles as most people in the world – I treat it as a tool that allows faster documenting and checking of facts. Whenever I use this tool I additionally verify the information. Just as I have done for several decades by reading books and by exploring libraries and archives.

2. None of my texts, including the novel that will appear in Polish this fall, has been written with the help of artificial intelligence – except for using it as a tool for faster preliminary research.

3. I am sometimes inspired by dreams, but before this sentence too is cornered and torn to pieces by the experts, I hasten to report that they are my own dreams.

Olga Tokarczuk, May 19, 2026, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones

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Sarah Weinman @sarahweinman.com · 19/05/2026

Santa Fe definitely ruled though

I, the author, posing next to a poster of me advertising my event at the Santa Fe International Literary Festival at the book signing post-event

View of Santa Fe area mountains from my hotel

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Sarah Weinman @sarahweinman.com · 10/05/2026

Happy Mother's Day from me and my mom (taken last month)

My mom (L) and me (r) at brunch on the morning after Passover ended.

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Sarah Weinman @sarahweinman.com · 04/05/2026

This one's for @elongreen.bsky.social archives.law.virginia.edu/resources/18...

Michael Stewart trial: John Kostick, Susan Techky, Henry Boerner, James Barry, Anthony Piscola, and Henry Hassler

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Sarah Weinman @sarahweinman.com · 27/04/2026

Or the sweet, sweet acid rage of Iris Owens

vintage paperback cover for AFTER CLAUDE (1973) by Iris Owens with the tagline: "I left Claude when he threw me out...but I'm not bitter!"

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Sarah Weinman @sarahweinman.com · 23/04/2026

Big news for the literary agency that represents me! (Reported at @publisherslunch.bsky.social)

DeFiore and Company and the Stuart Krichevsky Agency will combine to form one larger agency, operating under the DeFiore name, as of May 1. They will be based out of DeFiore’s Union Square offices.

"With the publishing industry, and the world, facing enormous challenges, having more creativity, expertise, experience and comradery under one roof is exciting," Brian DeFiore said in a release. "The goal is to create an even more supportive, nimble and powerful framework for all of us to serve our clients masterfully. I have known Stuart for many years and have admired the staff he assembled and the extraordinary authors they have nurtured. Having them all now as colleagues is thrilling."

"I have known and worked with Brian in many incarnations – as an editor and publisher, and as a valued and respected agent colleague," Stuart Krichevsky said. "I have long admired his leadership skills, and our shared priority of creating an organization that is collegial and collaborative, and where the needs of the client come first. I have always promised myself that I would secure SKLA’s future well before I make any plans to step down, and can think of no better home for the superb team we have built than at DeFiore and Company. I am confident that this new, combined agency will be a place where we can continue to create new opportunities for our clients and meet our obligations to them for the long term."

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Sarah Weinman @sarahweinman.com · 15/04/2026

Drop your crime fighting Catholics

Promo image for the BBC series FATHER BROWN (2013) based on GK Chesterton's novels & stories

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Sarah Weinman @sarahweinman.com · 08/04/2026

The paperback edition of WITHOUT CONSENT (with a very different cover) isn’t out till November 3 but pre-orders are welcome right now! www.harpercollins.com/products/wit...

Paperback cover of WITHOUT CONSENT with a yellow and black color scheme

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Sarah Weinman @sarahweinman.com · 05/04/2026

Deeply strange to be quoted and not recognize the quote at all Like, it’s entirely possible I said this but I can’t find the source and don’t want to think it’s an LLM hallucination….

$Geoffrey O'Brien, in his book "Hardboiled America," praises Thompson's relentless psychological excavation, calling him "the Dostoevsky of crime fiction." Critic Sarah Weinman credits him with turning the crime novel from puzzle to nightmare. More recently, writers such as Megan Abbott have highlighted how Thompson's novels anticipated the fractured, morally ambiguous storytelling prized by contemporary fiction.$

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Sarah Weinman @sarahweinman.com · 29/03/2026

Anna Ziegler’s update and reimagining of ANTIGONE was a staggeringly good play and you should see it before it closes next month

Playbill for ANTIGONE (This Play I Read in High School)

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Sarah Weinman @sarahweinman.com · 28/03/2026

This episode draws from my 2019 story for @thecut.com, and goes further -- all of Lourdes's children (Carlos, Amanda, and Antonio) speak on camera, as do all of the survivors ("Melissa", Amanda, and Meg) and it was an unbelievably emotional experience to see them all share their stories.

A screenshot of "Before and After the Jogger", my 2019 National Magazine Award finalist story for THE CUT, featuring a much better picture of Lourdes with her son Carlos that replaces the grainy photo of her with baby Amanda because at the time, I wasn't able to get a better photo to run with the piece

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Sarah Weinman @sarahweinman.com · 28/03/2026

The entire season dropped a few days ago, but I finally got to watch episode 4 of HOMICIDE: NEW YORK, "Your Eyes Or Your Life", on the murder of Lourdes Gonzalez in June 1989 and the larger story of who -- namely, the survivors, and Lourdes's family -- got written out of the Central Park narrative.

Screenshot from HOMICIDE: New York featuring me in a grey blazer and a dark shirt sitting on a chair with the chyron SARAH WEINMAN: Journalist

Lourdes Gonzalez with her infant baby Amanda, 1989

Lourdes Gonzalez with her first biological child, Carlos Vega

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Sarah Weinman @sarahweinman.com · 26/03/2026

My grand jury service coincided with the initial protests about Mahmoud Khalil's detainment by ICE and the contrast between my civic duty and the government's gigantic overreach was pretty stark: flaminghydra.com/email/49df12...

Photo (taken by me) of a March 2025 protest for the illegal detention of Mahmoud Khalil outside of 26 Federal Plaza

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Sarah Weinman @sarahweinman.com · 24/03/2026

Barnes & Noble is doing a pre-order sale for members (the code is PREORDER25) and that includes the paperback edition of WITHOUT CONSENT -- out November 3 with a brand-new cover: www.barnesandnoble.com/w/without-co...

Paperback cover (in yellow and black) for WITHOUT CONSENT: A Landmark Trial and the Decades-Long Struggle To Make Spousal Rape a Crime, featuring a black-and-white photo of Greta Rideout under scrutiny from various cameramen before her testimony on December 26, 1978

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Sarah Weinman @sarahweinman.com · 19/03/2026

WHEW www.nytimes.com/2026/03/19/b...

Even before “Shy Girl,” rumors circulated in the book world about near misses as publishers caught A.I. use before a book was released.

In one case, an editor at a major publishing house, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the editorial process is private, questioned a writer about why some passages in his latest book were so flat and bland. The author acknowledged that he had used A.I. for revisions.

Another publishing house found that a book it had acquired featured A.I. assisted prose and pulled it from publication, according to an employee who declined to elaborate or identify the author or the imprint, citing the confidential nature of publishing contacts.

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Sarah Weinman @sarahweinman.com · 11/03/2026

I was sitting too far back to really see

Gustavo Dudamel (L) in conversation with the NY Phil ceo (R) on stage at David Gergen Hall

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Sarah Weinman @sarahweinman.com · 06/03/2026

All hail the great Lore Segal

Cover for OTHER PEOPLE’S HOUSES by Lore Segal depicting a dark-haired girl with a suitcase standing in an unfamiliar doorway

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Sarah Weinman @sarahweinman.com · 04/03/2026

New favorite out-of-context headline

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Sarah Weinman @sarahweinman.com · 04/03/2026

This was not the piece I expected to write initially, but reading the news over the weekend and thinking about Shel Silverstein's "My Fear of Dentists" -- a cartoon that does not seem to be on the Internet anymore, but is imprinted on my mind -- made the words pour out.