The Hub

News, Notes, Talk

Here's everything that's making us happy this week.

We’re celebrating inter-species friendship this week. It’s a season of frogs, toads, raccoons, and genetically engineered extra-terrestrial life forms. IRL, we’re running on gossip, post-punk, and visions of a strong local government. It’s getting hot out. So we’re skipping town Read more >

By Brittany Allen

Here are the winners of the 2025 Women's Prizes in Fiction and Nonfiction.

Today, the UK’s Women’s Prize Trust announced the winner of the 30th Women’s Prize for Fiction, which “champions excellence, originality, and accessibility in women’s writing,” and is awarded to the best novel of each year written in English and published Read more >

By Literary Hub

Showbiz shows and publishing shows:
A list of pairings.

If you believe the American media, two industries are responsible for the whole wheel of culture. One’s in New York and makes print matter, and one’s in Los Angeles and makes :pops in cigar: motion pictures. Hollywood’s long been self-infatuated. Read more >

By Brittany Allen

Oregon has passed a bill to protect school libraries from book bans.

Another win for freedom to read legislation on the West Coast this week, as Oregon’s state House of Representatives passed Senate Bill 1098 on Monday, a bill that will protect access to books in school libraries. It’s great news: books Read more >

By James Folta

Dad Books: a flowchart.

This weekend is Father’s Day. For all who celebrate a father figure, and for all those who would like to gift said father figure a book on this most illustrious of holidays, I’ve put together the following flow chart. Whatever Read more >

By Brittany Allen

David Means has won the PEN/Faulkner Foundation's short story prize.

David Means, the author of six story collections (including Assorted Fire Events and Two Nurses, Smoking), has won this year’s PEN/Bernard and Ann Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story. Since 1998, the award has been given in honor Read more >

By Brittany Allen

Some resources to help out neighbors, immigrants, and protestors in LA.

Image from Reuters/Mike Blake It’s one of those weeks that already feels like a month: the Gaza relief ship Madleen has been illegally seized in the middle of their peace mission by Israel, Trump and his hogmen have put a Read more >

By James Folta

Black Gatsby! Britney Spears! Geoff Dyer! Queer chaos! 25 new books out today.

June rolls on, and I come bearing tidings, as always, of exciting new books out today to consider. (One of these, the self-styled queer-chaotic anthology Be Gay, Do Crime actually came out last week; I missed it last week by Read more >

By Gabrielle Bellot

Omar Hamad in Gaza:
"I once wrote with ink, today I write with ashes."

Omar Hamad is a Palestinian writer and pharmacist bearing witness to genocide in his home of Gaza. He writes about stolen love, safety and peace, and the reality of life on the ground. * I walk barefoot on the embers Read more >

By Omar Hamad

Your week in book news, in Venn diagrams.

Happy June! Hope your summer is getting off to a good start! For me, summer means batching a ton of cold brew and keeping myself constantly slathered in SPF ∞. Speaking of getting roasted, the worst people in the world Read more >

By James Folta

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

You’re in luck, readers. We have a lot to love this Friday. The theme this week is “Forever Young.” We at Lit Hub are getting our kicks in the rearview mirror, reminiscing on everything from our first chaotic friend groups Read more >

By Brittany Allen

New Yorkers can meet the Moomins at a new exhibit. (And for everyone else, here's a sneak preview.)

You may know Tove Jansson, the Finnish artist, by her literary fiction. Her bespoke illustrations. Or just her pioneering life as a queer multi-hyphenate, carving out a corner of the sky in post-war Europe. There’s a lot to know her Read more >

By Brittany Allen

Karen Leeder and Durs Grünbein have won the 2025 Griffin Poetry Prize.

Today, the Griffin Poetry Prize—the world’s largest international prize for a single book of poetry published in English—announced its 2025 winner, chosen from an illustrious shortlist of five. Karen Leeder has taken home the top prize for her translation, from Read more >

By Literary Hub

Writer Edmund White has died at 85.

Edmund White has passed away, and the world has lost a pioneering and passionate writer. He wrote beautifully and frankly about sex and gay life during his prolific career as a novelist and journalist, and prided himself on a view Read more >

By James Folta

Seven books to scratch that Pride and Prejudice itch.

Jane is in the air lately. This year, Joe Wright’s Pride and Prejudice turns twenty, which is the same age Keira Knightley was when she starred as the cool girl’s Lizzy Bennet. A new feast of a French film, Jane Read more >

By Brittany Allen

Bernardine Evaristo has been awarded the Women's Prize for Fiction's Outstanding Contribution Award.

Today, the Women’s Prize Trust announced Bernardine Evaristo as the recipient of the Women’s Prize Outstanding Contribution Award, a unique prize meant to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Women’s Prize for Fiction. All authors who had been previously longlisted, Read more >

By Literary Hub

My book recommendations versus your book recommendations.

Book recommendations are not all created equal. Sometimes when I tell a friend what they should read next, I feel sure they’ll like it. But when I get a recommendation? Well, sometimes it sends me in the opposite emotional direction: Read more >

By James Folta

Melissa Febos! Mike Tyson! Taylor Jenkins Reid! 26 new books out today.

The summer is here! And while that message is perhaps inescapably bittersweet this year, what with the world being on fire in ways both metaphorical and all-too-literal, it remains a truth universally acknowledged that a day of delightful weather can Read more >

By Gabrielle Bellot

All the fake books in Wes Anderson's multiverse, ranked.

This week, Wes Anderson’s latest concoction, The Phoenician Scheme, hits screens. And thanks to this latest work from a pointillist who loves his reference texts, I’m thinking about Anderson’s prop books. Wes has romanticized the literary arts for almost his Read more >

By Brittany Allen

What are the most Lynchian items in the David Lynch auction?

David Lynch has made frequent appearances on Lit Hub over the years—my colleague Brittany wrote a touching ode to his work when he died—and now you have the chance to own some of Lynch’s things, thanks to an upcoming auction Read more >

By James Folta