The Hub

News, Notes, Talk

Everything you need to know about the Sally Rooney/Israel controversy.

If you were on Twitter yesterday, you may have seen people talking about Sally Rooney being anti-Semitic. The reason for this conversation is the claim that Rooney refused to let her new novel, Beautiful World, Where Are You, be translated Read more >

By Walker Caplan

Read this newly discovered 1949 Ann Petry essay about Harlem.

On this day in 1908, Ann Petry was born in the bucolic seaside town of Old Saybrook, CT. Her groundbreaking novel The Street (1946) was an immediate success, selling 20,000 copies in advance of its release. It went on to Read more >

By Vanessa Willoughby

Here are some poetic ways to respond to annoying work emails.

During a recent passive scrolling session on Twitter, I found this tweet from way back in early 2019—yes, it was a long passive scrolling session, but I’m trying to make something of it here—in which Devin Gael Kelly jokes that Read more >

By Snigdha Koirala

This new web tool gets rid of everything but punctuation—so you can see your hidden literary style.

How does one visualize a writer’s style? You can close read and accumulate observations; you can map the structure of a text through drawing; and now, a new web tool allows you to visualize any piece of writing by stripping Read more >

By Walker Caplan

What to read next based on your favorite... roller skate moves!

Just like everyone else in their 20s who spends too much time scrolling through Instagram Reels, I have gotten very into roller skating over the past few months. It’s pure joy! It makes you feel like a child! It gives Read more >

By Katie Yee

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