Names and faces
■ The next novel by Jesmyn Ward, the two-time National Book Award winner, is the story of an enslaved teenage girl the publisher is calling a blend of magical realism, historical narrative and Dante’s “Inferno.” Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, announced Friday that Ward’s “Let Us Descend” will come out Oct. 3. In a statement issued by Scribner, Ward said she wanted to explore the “hard truth” of her new book’s protagonist, Annis, and what it meant to “have little to no physical agency over her own body.” “I also wanted to encourage readers to feel with and for Annis, and to re-create her experience as viscerally as possible,” said Ward, the only Black author to receive two National Book Awards for fiction. Ward is also a recipient of a MacArthur “Genius” grant and, in 2022, became the youngest winner of the Library of Congress’s Prize for American Fiction. Ward, 45, teaches at Tulane University.
■ Priscilla Presley has contested the will of her late daughter, Lisa Marie Presley, and asked the Los Angeles County Superior Court to determine the validity of the document. Priscilla Presley filed a petition Thursday disputing a 2016 amendment to the will that allegedly removed the matriarch and her daughter’s former business manager, Barry Siegel, as trustees and replaced them with Lisa Marie’s eldest children, Riley Keough, 33, and Benjamin Keough — who died in 2020. Priscilla, along with Siegel, is a co-trustee of Lisa Marie’s estate and seeks to keep it that way. The petition claims that the amendment “allegedly signed by Lisa Marie Presley” misspells her mother’s name and contains a signature that “appears inconsistent with [Lisa Marie’s] usual and customary signature.” Priscilla also maintains that the 2016 amendment was never delivered to her during her daughter’s lifetime “as required by the express terms of the trust” and the document was never witnessed or notarized. The filing also notes that Priscilla believes Siegel “has already or will soon resign as co-trustee” — in which case Riley Keough would be appointed co-trustee with her grandmother. Lisa Marie died earlier this month after suffering cardiac arrest at a home near Calabasas, Calif. The singer and only child of Elvis and Priscilla Presley was 54.