The Hub

News, Notes, Talk

Let's celebrate Jesse Plemons' finest "Vaguely Sinister Weirdo" performances.

You’d have to have a heart of stone not to be delighted for Jesse Plemons and his recent spate of professional/personal successes. The tawny-haired Texan—who possesses a unique ability to convey both warm, slightly wounded vulnerability and utterly dead-eyed psychopathy, Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

A Zoom event tomorrow will feature writers from Ukraine speaking to writers in Boston.

This Thursday, a hybrid event hosted by the Transnational Literature Series at Brookline Booksmith, Goethe-Institut Boston, the German Consulate in Boston, and AGNI will feature writers from Ukraine.  The seven Ukrainian writers, including five Zooming in from within Ukraine, are Read more >

By Emily Firetog

Viking will publish a book of John le Carré's letters in November.

Here’s a nice mid-week lift for fans of John le Carré: Viking will publish A Private Spy: The Letters of John le Carré, edited by his son Tim Cornwell, on Nov. 8. The book sounds like it has plenty to Read more >

By Corinne Segal

The Dutch publisher of a controversial new book on Anne Frank is dropping it.

The Dutch publisher of a new book, which proposes that Anne Frank’s family was betrayed by a Jewish man in their community, has dropped it after a group of historians and academics published a long statement discrediting its underlying research. Read more >

By Corinne Segal

We're getting a new Kate Atkinson novel, set in a 1920s nightclub.

This fall is shaping up to be a very exciting time for new books by beloved writers—we’ll be getting two new novels by Cormac McCarthy, a new collection by George Saunders, and, as announced by Doubleday today, a new standalone Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

Thanks to Ted Cruz, The End of Policing is a bestseller.

In unsurprising—but nevertheless extremely depressing—news, yesterday’s senate confirmation hearings for Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court, saw Ted Cruz haranguing Jackson about (what else?) Critical Race Theory. Cruz’s extremely flimsy pretext for introducing Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

Exclusive cover reveal: Elizabeth Strout’s Lucy by the Sea.

Lit Hub is pleased to reveal the cover for Pulitzer-winning author Elizabeth Strout’s latest novel Lucy by the Sea, which will be published by Random House this September. In Lucy by the Sea, Strout follows Lucy—the protagonist of My Name Read more >

By Literary Hub

Watch the dramatic new trailer for Where the Crawdads Sing.

The book that spent 150—yes, 150!—weeks on the New York Times bestseller list is coming to theaters this July. The movie adaptation for Delia Owens’ Where the Crawdads Sing finally has a shiny new trailer! You know Daisy Edgar-Jones from Read more >

By Katie Yee

Here are this year’s winners of the J. Anthony Lukas Prize Project Awards.

This morning, Columbia Journalism School and the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard announced the winners of the 2022 J. Anthony Lukas Prize Project Awards, which have honored the best in American nonfiction writing since 1998. The J. Anthony Lukas Read more >

By Walker Caplan

14 new books to revive your reading life.

Sometimes you’re in a book slump, and the only thing you can bring yourself to read is the first two pages of anything and/or the short synopsis of shows on Netflix. But every once in a while (okay, every Tuesday Read more >

By Katie Yee

Dolly Parton is going to star in the adaptation of Run, Rose, Run.

Dolly Parton is going to be working 9-5 on a new movie! Word on the street is: the beloved musician/godmother of literacy/vaccine funder/hotly contested Rock & Roll hall of fame nominee has signed on for Hello Sunshine’s adaptation of Run, Read more >

By Katie Yee

Cheryl Strayed releases a cut scene from Wild in honor of the memoir's 10th anniversary.

It’s been ten years since the release of Wild, Cheryl Strayed’s bracingly honest memoir about hiking the Pacific Crest Trail as a young adult after her mother’s death with no experience or training—and to ccelebrate the anniversary, Strayed has released Read more >

By Walker Caplan

A springtime field guide to the iconic flora of children’s literature.

Spring has officially sprung! The flowers will come in waves. First the daffodils, crocuses, and snowdrops. Then the tulips bloom loudly, followed by the zinnias and the lavender. And the roses will carry us till fall. But the greenery we Read more >

By Katie Yee

Lambda Literary cuts Lauren Hough from award shortlist because of “Twitter disputes.” 

In a decision that feels perfectly timed to keep last week’s cancel culture debate (part 327) going strong into this week, Lambda Literary preemptively removed the writer Lauren Hough from an awards shortlist because of recent “Twitter disputes.” According to Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

Researchers are mapping the effects of climate change on Walden Pond—with help from Thoreau.

Last month, we blogged about researchers using ecological models to estimate the amount of lost medieval literature, and now, we’re blogging about the opposite: researchers using work from creatives to conduct ecological research. As JSTOR Daily highlighted this week, scientists Read more >

By Walker Caplan

Actually, here is the dumb book-adjacent discourse to waste your time on today.

It’s not even noon and we’ve basically cycled through two fruitless Twitter storms around putatively bookish topics. The first seems like a classic case of engagement farming (“How can you read fiction during a time of war [you escapist monster]?”), Read more >

By Jonny Diamond