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 >
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 >
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 >
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 >
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 >
Did you know that German genre publishers used to insert paid product placement into domestic translations of popular international writers? Yes, it’s true. And here’s exhibit A (via this Neil Gaiman thread). Apparently the reason beloved sci-fi writer Terry Pratchett Read more >
Literary Hub is pleased to reveal the cover for Ada Limón’s latest collection of poetry, The Hurting Kind, which will be published by Milkweed Editions this spring. Here’s how Milkweed describes the book: These poems slip through the seasons, teeming Read more >
The other day, I was walking down the street and I ran into my favorite high school English teacher. It was delightful! And it was very strange to realize that I hadn’t seen her in over a decade, since she Read more >
Today, EW reported that in 2022, Vintage Books will be republishing Joan Didion’s entire backlist—beginning with her latest, Let Me Tell You What I Mean—with a brand new, cohesive redesign. The new covers, which were designed by Linda Huang, are Read more >
This week, London’s Ark All Saints Academy produced a list of words and phrases banned from their classes. But it’s not a list of insults or hateful language: it’s a list of slang and filler words, in the hopes students Read more >
Something very cute has happened: the University of Sydney and Amazon Web Services are partnering to establish a koala library. Okay, it’s a genome library, but even though it’s a repository of data, not a repository of koalas curled up Read more >
It’s officially October, which marks the start of National Cookbook Month. If you’re searching for some new sweet or savory treats to make, why not look to Maya Angelou? In addition to being a wizard with her literary pen game, Read more >
Lit Hub is pleased to reveal the cover for The Oedipus Trilogy, Bryan Doerries’s new translations of Sophocles’s Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone, forthcoming from Vintage Books on October 26th. Doerries, a New York-based writer, director and Read more >
It appears the bucket hats and tote bags and coffee carts didn’t work on at least one person: in an interview with Merve Emre in Vulture, Jonathan Franzen admitted he hasn’t read Sally Rooney. “People seem to speak well of Read more >
Upward of fifty high-profile writers and artists have signed a letter addressed to Iran’s president Ebrahim Raisi, calling for the release of three Iranian writers: Baktash Abtin, Keyvan Bajan, and Reza Khandan Mahabadi. Abtin is a poet, screenwriter, and filmmaker; Read more >
Extremely good news for the Franzen Hive—with apologies to Jonathan Franzen, who would probably really hate the phrase “Franzen Hive”—we’re getting a TV adaptation of his latest novel, Crossroads, which will hit shelves Tuesday. I am lucky enough to have Read more >
On this day, International Translators Day, a group of prominent translators (and writers, and publishers) have added their names to an open letter written by Jennifer Croft (translator of Olga Tokarczuk’s International Booker Prize-winning Flights) and Mark Haddon (author of The Read more >
At this point, you may have heard it said many times: the United States incarcerates more people than other country in the world. And according to The Sentencing Project, the numbers have increased by a staggering 500 percent in the Read more >
Macbeths, it would seem, are like busses: you wait forever for the right one to arrive and then two round the corner at once. Barely a week on from the release of the first teaser trailer for Joel Coen’s upcoming Read more >
Yesterday saw the groundbreaking of the Obama Presidential Center, former president Barack Obama’s presidential library in Jackson Park on Chicago’s South Side. In their speeches, the former president and Michelle Obama both focused on their personal ties to the South Read more >
