The Hub

News, Notes, Talk

The 10 best Goosebumps covers, ranked.

Today is the 78th birthday of RL Stine, AKA Jovial Bob Stine, AKA “the Stephen King of children’s literature.” It also happens to be the perfect season to revisit some of his ~spoooooookiest~ book covers! Luckily, someone I can only Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

The creator of Midnight Mass is now adapting Poe's Fall of the House of Usher.

Director/writer Mike Flanagan has quickly made a name for himself as a horror maestro. The man behind Netflix’s hit anthology series The Haunting and the recently released Midnight Mass is set to adapt Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the Read more >

By Vanessa Willoughby

Instead of acting like Kidney Person, be more like these 19th-century literary haters.

Today, for no reason in particular, I’m thinking about writerly infighting. It’s alarming to know that your insulting groupchat messages could become public—especially in a culture of networking, where negative feelings about fellow writers are mostly expressed through texts, emails, Read more >

By Walker Caplan

Presenting the Giving Tree Kid's Hierarchy of Needs.

On this day in 1964, Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree was published. As children’s classics go, this one is divisive: it is about noble self-sacrifice? Generosity turned to martyrdom, run amuck? Millennial parent burnout??? Silverstein himself said of the book, “It’s about Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

Sue Grafton’s alphabet series will be adapted for TV—despite her family’s "blood oath."

Exclusive rights to the late Sue Grafton’s popular alphabet book series featuring private investigator Kinsey Millhone—A is for Alibi and so on—have sold to A+E Studios. Now, the studio can develop the entirety of the series for television. Steve Humphrey, Read more >

By Walker Caplan

Tanzanian novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah has won the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Congratulations to Tanzanian novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah, who was announced this morning as the winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature, for “for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in Read more >

By Emily Temple

This Virginia library is getting kids to read . . . through robot companionship.

Parents and educators have tried many different tactics to get children to read—games, star charts, personalized books. Now, Roanoke County Public Library is trying something new, which seems both incredibly effective and a little dystopian: encouraging children to read by Read more >

By Walker Caplan

Who will buy Christopher Robin and Winnie the Pooh's playdate bridge?

Do you happen to have at least £40,000 ($54,216.32) at your disposal? Are you in need of a bridge that has literary significance? Well then, place your bid to buy Posingford Bridge, otherwise known as Poohsticks Bridge. The bridge, located Read more >

By Vanessa Willoughby

Jeremy O. Harris pulled Slave Play’s LA premiere over CTG's lack of female playwrights.

As Americans get vaccinated and pandemic restrictions are lifted, theaters are opening up and announcing new programming. Last week, LA’s Center Theatre Group announced the 2021-22 season for their two theaters, the Mark Taper Forum and the Kirk Douglas Theater, Read more >

By Walker Caplan

Here's the trailer for the musical adaptation of Cyrano, starring Peter Dinklage.

If you thought the Kidney story was bad, imagine the long-form journalism that Robert Kolker could have written about Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac, the actual guy whose life (real and imagined) is the subject of Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

How an iconic Canadian rock band lured angry teens to the dark arts of Ayn Rand.

If there was one band that dominated the soundtrack of a 1980s childhood on the wrong side of outer-suburban Toronto, it was Rush. Particularly if you had older brothers who smoked a lot of pot. To be honest, though, we Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

On the mysterious obscenity scribbled on John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath manuscript.

This week, SP Books, a press which primarily publishes manuscripts, will release facsimiles of the handwritten manuscript of The Grapes of Wrath. The manuscript, currently stored in the University of Virginia’s archives, reveals information previously unknown to casual readers about Read more >

By Walker Caplan

Here are the bookies’ odds for the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Attention literary gamblers and other people who like losing money: the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature will be announced this Thursday, October 7 at 7:00 EST, and the bookies are open. The winner will receive a Nobel Prize diploma, a Read more >

By Emily Temple

Exclusive cover reveal: Akwaeke Emezi’s Content Warning: Everything.

Literary Hub is pleased to reveal the cover for Freshwater and The Death of Vivek Oji author Akwaeke Emezi’s debut poetry collection, Content Warning: Everything, which will be published by Copper Canyon Press this spring. Here’s how Copper Canyon describes Read more >

By Literary Hub

Rapper Noname just opened an LA library dedicated to the Black experience.

Fatimah Nyeema Warner, otherwise known as Noname, has become a fierce advocate for literacy. The Chicago rapper, who generated buzz after appearing on Chance the Rapper’s 2013 mixtape Acid Rap, launched her synonymous book club in July of 2019. Noname Read more >

By Vanessa Willoughby

Astronomers have determined the exact hour that Mary Shelley thought of Frankenstein.

It’s a well known fact that an 18-year-old Mary Shelley (then still Mary Wollstonecraft, after her mother) wrote Frankenstein at Lord Byron’s house (actually a rented mansion on Lake Geneva) after the poet, during a streak of bad weather, challenged Read more >

By Emily Temple

Here are the 2021 National Book Award Finalists.

Today, the National Book Foundation announced the twenty-five finalists for the 2021 National Book Awards—five each in the categories of fiction, nonfiction, translated literature, poetry, and young people’s literature. This year’s winners will be announced live on Wednesday, November 17th Read more >

By Emily Temple

21 new titles to get cozy with this week.

Fall may be here, but October sure is coming in hot with these new books—including titles from Tracy K. Smith, David Sedaris, Miriam Toews, Eugene Lim, Claire Vaye Watkins, and (oh, yes) Jonathan Franzen. * Jonathan Franzen, Crossroads (FSG) “His Read more >

By Katie Yee

Esi Edugyan’s Washington Black is coming to Hulu.

Today, Hulu announced that it has ordered a nine-episode limited series adaptation of Esi Edugyan’s Booker-shortlisted novel Washington Black. Sterling K. Brown (This is Us, Black Panther) will star in the series; he’s also executive producing under his Indian Meadow Read more >

By Walker Caplan

This 7-year-old is advocating for more disability-centered books in libraries.

7-year-old Noah Holt loves to read, but was caught off guard when he noticed his elementary school’s library and the public library near his house in Amesbury, Massachusetts owned barely any books about disability. Holt, who has acute flaccid myelitis Read more >

By Walker Caplan