The Hub

News, Notes, Talk

This week’s news in Venn diagrams.

Happy Friday the 13th (Ahh!) and Valentine’s Day Eve (Ohh!), dear readers. I wrote a little poem for you all, the Venn fans. Roses are cherry, And violets are blue, If these jokes make you merry, I love you, it’s Read more >

By James Folta

The Trump administration is illegally gutting NASA’s largest research library.

Founded in 1959, the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland is home to NASA’s largest research library. For decades, scientists, engineers, students, and a curious public have leaned on the archive to understand the physics and mechanics of space Read more >

By Brittany Allen

Arundhati Roy quits this year’s Berlinale over “jaw-dropping” jury remarks against political art and Gaza.

In a statement to The Wire, author Arundhati Roy announced she will no longer participate in the 2026 Berlinale film festival. The author of Mother Mary Comes to Me and The God of Small Things was invited to a screening Read more >

By James Folta

Here’s what’s making us happy this week.

We’re having a family-oriented week, here at Lit Hub. We’ve been catching our joy from real and fictional siblings, kids, and that ur-family, the union.  To begin with the latter, James Folta is looking forward to a new show out Read more >

By Brittany Allen

American Woman doll? Samantha is getting a grown-up novel.

To celebrate the 40th anniversary of its beloved American Girl Doll empire, Mattel is launching a bevy of new products. Some of them ultra-fresh, like the ladies of the K-Pop Demon Hunter collection. But some of them, very old-school. The Read more >

By Brittany Allen

Explore Black literary NYC with this map of 100 important spots.

This year is the 100th anniversary of Black History Month, and the bookstore McNally Jackson put together a list of 100 places in New York’s five boroughs that were significant for Black literary culture. It’s a pretty comprehensive list of Read more >

By James Folta

Allegra Goodman, Ej Dickson, Chris Jennings, and more: 22 new books out today!

Five more weeks of winter, says Punxsutawney Phil, but who’s counting? As the week eases into Valentine’s Day, I can’t say there’s a huge selection of romance in this week’s batch, but romance is in the eyes of the beholder. Read more >

By Julia Hass

A brief literary history of The Muppet Show.

Last week on a Disney+ account near you, Seth Rogen—the hardest working man in show biz—announced the return of the Kerm. A one-off Muppet Show special starring Sabrina Carpenter, Maya Rudolph, and other human and furry celebrities brought Jim Henson’s Read more >

By Brittany Allen

It’s hypocritical to denounce book bans while publishing their defenders.

Over on Balls & Strikes, law writer Jay Willis published an excellent piece about the Hachette imprint Basic Liberty publishing conservative Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s So Ordered, a book about Alito’s “judicial philosophy and reflects on the roles of Read more >

By James Folta

Anthropic didn’t want us to know that they were destroying millions of books to feed their software.

Companies making machine learning and generative software aren’t just metaphorically ripping off books. In at least one case, they’re rather literally shredding millions of physical books to feed to their chatbots. As uncovered last month by The Washington Post, AI Read more >

By James Folta

This week’s news in Venn diagrams.

It’s almost too on the nose for me, but I completely forgot that this weekend was the Super Bowl. If you’re watching, hope it’s a fun one! And if you’re not, it’s a great excuse to break out all your Read more >

By James Folta

Here’s what’s making us happy this week.

Happy Friday, readers! Here at Lit Hub, we’re determined to keep fighting the good fight. As cold fronts continue to pummel the East coast and craven billionaires and mad kings continue to play pickle-ball with our rights, lifting up the Read more >

By Brittany Allen

Two stories about paranoia for our conspiratorial moment.

Everyone I know is becoming a bit of a conspiracist. It’s hard not to, when the powerful are unrestrained and as unrepentant, and when everything seems corrupted by disturbing associations. There’s less and less subtext, fewer cover-ups. The assholes are Read more >

By James Folta

The Washington Post is gutting its books coverage.

Earlier today, Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post laid off hundreds of its employees, in what one staffer called “an absolute bloodbath.” As The Guardian reported this morning, editor-in-chief Matt Murray told his masthead that the paper was due for a “strategic Read more >

By Brittany Allen

Why is everyone suddenly obsessed with “reframing” rejection?

Maybe it’s the generally dismal vibes, or the looming specter of Valentine’s Day—but something’s going on with rejection. Note the big screen, where our big February romance is shaping up to be Wuthering Heights—a Gothic horror that hinges on Catherine’s Read more >

By Brittany Allen

Toni Morrison, Dan Chiasson, Lily Meyer, and more: 23 new books out today!

And we’re on to the next frigid winter month: February has been waiting like a savior at the end of a long January, but we may just find it doesn’t bear all that dissimilar an energy to the month we Read more >

By Julia Hass

What does it mean that the world’s biggest live-streamer is broadcasting himself reading?

It’s a dizzying, humbling, ages-you-a-year-in-a-minute experience to come across the name of a public figure you don’t recognize, and then discover that the name belongs to one of the most popular people in the entire world. What I’m saying is Read more >

By James Folta

What to read next if The Testament of Ann Lee was your favorite movie of 2025.

I’m speaking to you, freaky ecclesiastical femmes. If you left Mona Fastvold’s strange epic singing hymns at the top of your lungs, and spent last week shaking with anger at the Academy’s oversight, please come testify by me. The Testament of Ann Read more >

By Brittany Allen

Robert Frost, Joni Mitchell, Picasso... 25 books out in paperback this February.

February is upon us, and, after a month of seemingly unending horrors, it is difficult not to feel a need for something else, for the quiet company of art, for something to relight our lanterns. Books cannot stop the world’s Read more >

By Gabrielle Bellot

What to read to understand the ICE phenomenon.

Our friends at Verso have prepared this ultra thorough ABOLISH ICE reading list, featuring a number of excellent titles that can help explain how we got here. Histories of American immigration, or the origins of the Department of Homeland Security, Read more >

By Brittany Allen

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