The Hub

News, Notes, Talk

Gillian Anderson wants to hear all about your sexual fantasies.

Yup. The recent star of the absolutely charming series Sex Education is collecting the sexual fantasies of women as part of her plan to reprise Nancy Friday’s 1973 book, The Secret Garden: Women’s Sexual Fantasies. Friday’s book, which was groundbreaking Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

A few more suggestions of what to say to a friend whose book you haven't read.

This morning, The Cut published its definitive guide to contemporary etiquette, from ghosting to tipping to navigating varying levels of COVID caution. The list contained plenty of fascinating and discourse-generating takeaways (though I haven’t yet seen anyone address the wild revelation Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

17 paperbacks coming out this February.

All hail the paperback release. * Tessa Hadley, Free Love (Harper Perennial, February 7) The HarperCollins Union has been on strike since November 10, 2022. Literary Hub stands in solidarity with the union. Please consider donating to the strike fund. “The Read more >

By Katie Yee

The new adaptation of Naomi Alderman’s The Power, starring Toni Collette, looks great.

As you can see in the trailer below, the long-destined adaptation of Naomi Alderman’s 2016 novel, The Power (read an excerpt here) looks fantastic, not least because it stars the divine Toni Collette. I’m glad this one is a series Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

That time Disneyland Paris built a Space Mountain ride themed after Jules Verne.

It started out as more than just a ride. In the early 1990s, Disneyland Paris (then called “Euro Disney”) had planned a whole Jules Verne area, “Discoveryland,” to be one of the main features of the new amusement park. According Read more >

By Olivia Rutigliano

If you were outbid on Joan Didion's sunglasses, fear not—you can still buy her apartment.

If Joan Didion’s estate auction taught us anything, it’s that people will pay a wild amount of money to own a piece of the writer. (Because, as we all know, both talent and ineffable cool live on in the Limoges Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

READER MAILBAG: This little library in Vermont needs your help!

Ok, so Lit Hub doesn’t actually have a literal mailbag, but we do get a ton of emails. Though most of them are some combination of belligerent and aloof, we occasionally get earnest requests for help, generally of the smalltown Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

Here are the 2022 National Book Critics Circle Award finalists.

On Tuesday, the National Book Critics Circle announced its 30 finalists for the 2022 National Book Critics Circle Awards, which celebrate the best books of the year in six categories: autobiography, biography, criticism, fiction, general nonfiction, and poetry. The finalists Read more >

By Emily Temple

NASA is sending an Ada Limón poem into space.

You can keep your presidential inaugurations and your state funerals, here’s the commission every self-respecting poet really dreams of. NASA has asked U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón to craft an original poem that will go on the spacecraft Europa Clipper on Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

Donald Trump is suing Bob Woodward and Simon & Schuster over his audio interviews.

Donald Trump, no stranger to lawsuits, is starting one of his own against Bob Woodward and publisher Simon & Schuster, claiming they had no right to release The Trump Tapes, an audio “book” consisting of 20 recorded conversations between the Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

10 new books to cherish this week.

January goes out strong: these books from Ursula K. Le Guin, V (formerly Eve Ensler), Deborah Levy, Ben Okri, and more hit shelves today. * Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven (Scribner) “A rare and powerful synthesis of Read more >

By Katie Yee

Julie Otsuka won a (much-deserved) Carnegie Medal!

Yesterday, the American Library Association announced the winners of the 2023 Carnegie Medals for Excellence. In fiction, the winner was Julie Otsuka for her most recent novel, The Swimmers. This brilliant book starts out at a community pool; it invites us Read more >

By Katie Yee

Wait, Channing Tatum is writing a romance novel with Roxane Gay?

Today I learned that Channing Tatum is writing a “fun and sexy” romance novel with Roxane Gay. And you know what, that is fun and sexy! Yep—Tatum is expanding from children’s books (and this) into something a little more grown-up. Read more >

By Emily Temple

Here are the winners of the first Albertine Translation Prize.

At a ceremony in New York on Thursday, Villa Albertine announced the winners of the first Albertine Translation Prize, which honors “the best contemporary French literature in English translation,” as selected by a committee of independent professional experts. “Together with Read more >

By Literary Hub

The great Dee Snider of Twisted Sister is writing a novel about toxic masculinity.

The man largely responsible for one of the great rock anthems of the 1980s, “We’re Not Gonna Take It,” told an interviewer recently that he’s writing a novel about toxic masculinity. It’s called Frats, and as Dee Snider (who’s 67!) Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

Attention: a new Jesmyn Ward novel is coming this fall.

Lovers of gorgeous prose and ghost-soaked literary fiction rejoice: two-time National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward’s next novel officially has a release date. Let Us Descend, Ward’s first novel in five years (since 2017’s Sing, Unburied Sing) will be published by Read more >

By Emily Temple