The newsletter that Lena Dunham created with her producing partner Jenni Konner is getting a new home, at Random House. Lenny Letter, the feminist digest which the pair launched in 2015, will now be the basis for an imprint overseen by RH v-p and editor-in-chief Andy Ward that will publish both fiction and nonfiction works.
Lenny will start releasing titles in 2017 and function, Ward said, as "a natural extension of Random House’s relationship with Lena Dunham." (Dunham's debut book, the nonfiction collection Not That Kind of Girl, was published by Random House in 2014 after reportedly being acquired for over $3 million.) Ward said the imprint will publish a "select number" of books a year, looking to "build a varied, compelling, and voice-driven list."
In its inaugural issue, the Lenny newsletter featured an interview Dunham conducted with Hillary Clinton. It tends to feature a mix of fiction and nonfiction by famous names, as well as unknowns. Recent Lenny pieces have included an essay by the actress Joy Bryant confronting other peoples' assumptions about her desire for motherhood, and Luckiest Girl Alive author Jessica Knoll's essay revealing that the rape she depicted in her novel was based on something that happened to her.
Speaking to BuzzFeed about the imprint, Dunham said: "While we love our home on the Internet, Jenni and I are both voracious readers (of books and book reviews) who are constantly trading titles and allowing them to stir us creatively." She went on to say that Lenny books "will aspire to push the ball forward on the issues that matter to our audience, with wit and style. We hope to see them sticking out of purses and riding public transportation everywhere.”
