The Hub

News, Notes, Talk

The Kirk Cameron-drag queen story hour cage match is officially on.

Children: choose your fighter. In the red corner: evangelist actor, “loving husband,” and new children’s book author Kirk Cameron, who had a crowd of “hundreds” at his Christian-themed children’s book reading in Hendersonville, Tennessee, over the weekend, after conceiving of Read more >

By Janet Manley

Cover Reveal: See the cover for Farah Ali's The River, The Town.

Literary Hub is pleased to reveal the cover for Farah Ali’s debut novel, The River, The Town, which publishes in October 2023 from Dzanc Books. Here’s some more about the book from the publisher: In the rural town in Pakistan Read more >

By Literary Hub

You're a bestselling author, but do you have your own NFTs? Neal Stephenson has a new flex.

Want a post-apocalyptic dystopia? I’ll give you a post-apocalyptic dystopia, said novelist Neal Stephenson, who has jumped into the NFT game with some glitchy Y2K-looking art. Stephenson authored the Y2K classic Snow Crash, a story credited with “predicting” the metaverse, Read more >

By Janet Manley

Hell yeah, Michael Imperioli reads Eileen Myles.

Celebrities with good taste in literature: you truly love to see it. This week Michael Imperioli (of The Sopranos, and White Lotus, and also the stupidly under-watched, hysterical This Fool fame), posted a cool literary selfie, with the caption: “the Read more >

By Emily Temple

Could a billionaire’s child get these infamous fictional boxes made?

This morning, apropos of nothing, I got to thinking about boxes. More specifically, I got to thinking about some of my favorite fictional boxes. Why, I wondered, in a country so full of industrious billionaires and their plucky, disruptor offspring, Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

Great turnip literature to devour during the British vegetable shortage.

Amid food shortages that Farmer MacGregor would despair of, Great Britons were this week urged to “cherish the specialisms that we have in this country” by UK environment secretary, Thérèse Coffey, who insisted to parliament that there were turnips enough Read more >

By Janet Manley

Exclusive cover reveal: See the cover for Ed Park's Same Bed Different Dreams.

Literary Hub is pleased to reveal the cover for Ed Park’s long awaited second novel Same Bed Different Dreams, which will be published by Random House this fall. Here’s a bit about the novel from the publisher: March, 1919. Far-flung Korean Read more >

By Literary Hub

We regret that the Grinch appears to have lost Christmas in a forthcoming sequel.

Lessons were learned in Dr. Seuss’s 1957 classic, How The Grinch Stole Christmas. But, per USA Today, the Grinch appears to have fallen into old habits in a commissioned sequel, set the year after his heart grew three sizes. How Read more >

By Janet Manley

Cover reveal: See the cover for Rachel Eliza Griffiths's Promise.

Literary Hub is pleased to reveal the cover for Rachel Eliza Griffiths’s novel Promise, which Danielle Evans calls “a stunning exploration of the weight and triumph of legacy” and which will be published by Random House in July. Here’s some Read more >

By Literary Hub

Chip Gaines bought Larry McMurtry's legendary bookstore to... fix up, we hope?

After Lonesome Dove author Larry McMurtry died in 2021, his bookstore in Archer City, Texas, was turned over to the long-term store manager, Khristal Merklin. But as CNN reports, in November 2022, the deed was snapped up by Fixer Upper’s Read more >

By Janet Manley

Florence Welch's Gatsby musical will premiere next year.

Did everyone else know that Florence Welch (of Florence + the Machine fame) was writing both music and lyrics for a Broadway-aimed musical adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby? I certainly didn’t, and I pride myself on knowing Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

Let famous authors do the reading for you in the Toni Morrison virtual marathon.

As snow begins to hem in parts of the U.S., it’s a good time to remind you that a virtual marathon reading of Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon kicks off on Thursday and flies, suitcase in hand, through February 25, Read more >

By Janet Manley

Jeremy Strong's book list is perfect for reading atop a bluff in strong and moody winds.

The premiere of Succession’s fourth season is less than a month away, and the shadowy outline of a wilted Prince Hal is already angling down the hall. Jeremy Strong, who plays Kendall Roy, the firstborn failson of the Henry IV/King Read more >

By Janet Manley

Okay, so you can write books with AI.
But why bother?

As was perhaps inevitable, ChatGPT—the free chatbot created by OpenAI that has been ruffling feathers ever since it was launched in November—has now spawned “a boom in AI-written e-books on Amazon,” according to Greg Bensinger at Reuters. Bensinger counted over Read more >

By Emily Temple

Announcing the seventh annual Honey & Wax Book Collecting Prize.

Literary Hub is pleased to announce that submissions are now open for the seventh annual Honey & Wax Book Collecting Prize, which awards $1,000 for “an outstanding book collection conceived and built by a woman aged 30 or younger,” who Read more >

By Emily Temple

Behind the open letter asking the AWP Conference to require masks.

When we first put the petition up, I wasn’t sure anyone would sign it. An irrational fear, I told myself. After all, I was one of 29 co-signers that included Alexander Chee, Maggie Smith, Kelly Link, Khadijah Queen, Sarah Schulman, Read more >

By Alyssa Harad