In 1928, barber I.A. Persinger started compiling a collection of “Wash Tubbs” comics, artist Roy Crane’s daily newspaper strip. But he did something else: he had his friends and customers write in the scrapbook, as evidenced by its spine’s inscription, Read more >
Ted Cruz, lover of Cancún and basketball rings, has a scandal on his hands: Forbes reported yesterday that Cruz’s campaign may have spent one hundred and fifty-three thousand dollars on copies of his 2020 book, One Vote Away: How a Read more >
Good news for two intersecting subsets of people: Danny DeVito will be writing a story in Gotham City Villains Anniversary Giant, an anthology comic celebrating various Batman villains. DeVito’s story, drawn by Dan Mora, will—of course!—focus on The Penguin, who Read more >
It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s this week’s biggest new books—coming to indie bookstores near you! * Billie Jean King, All In (Knopf) “[A] lively and inspiring portrait of pressure-cooker play and political upheaval in tennis, from one of its Read more >
Astrid Roemer, the first Surinamese author to win the Netherlands’s prestigious award the Prijs der Nederlandse Letteren, has had her award ceremony canceled after making Facebook statements supporting former Suriname president Dési Bouterse. Roemer will still receive the £40,000 award Read more >
Exciting Monday book news: Leslie Jamison has struck a two-book North American rights agreement with Little, Brown, her standing publisher. They’ll be publishing both a nonfiction book—Splinters—and a novel, Risk. Risk will be Jamison’s first novel since her 2010 debut, Read more >
Arnold Schwarzenegger is in the news today because he wrote an article for The Atlantic titled “Don’t Be a Schmuck. Put on a Mask.” The article itself is a lot—Schwarzenegger quotes John Adams and Team America, gives a shout out to “beautiful, powerful” Read more >
Last year’s summer of protests inspired a particular aesthetic of online activism. You’ve probably seen it on Instagram: a 10-image carousel of text and graphics that are probably set against a Canva-created backdrop. It’s what Vox writer Terry Nguyen calls Read more >
There are iconic voices and then there are iconic voices. Think of James Earl Jones’ rumbling grandeur. Sam Elliott’s laid-back Western drawl. Anthony Hopkins’ soothing-but-sinister enunciation. Lauren Bacall’s breathy bass—marvelous, mellifluous voices all. For my money, however, the greatest voice Read more >
It’s been a year of literary scams. Mysterious phishers have been scamming writers out of manuscripts; someone posed as Valeria Luiselli via email and stole £30k of prize money; fake agents were as present as ever; some jerk stole donations Read more >
Well, you may not have asked for this, but I’ve gone and done it anyway. But with good reason. Taylor Swift has long been hailed for her lyricism and storytelling. And especially since the release of her two surprise 2020 Read more >
Today marks the 194th anniversary of the death of poet, artist, and Milton fanboy William Blake. If you feel moved to revisit his work today, consider checking out the Blake Archive, a digital humanities project which has collected Blake’s printed Read more >
Exciting news for high school writers: Amanda Gorman and Penguin Random House have teamed up to launch the Amanda Gorman Award for Poetry. The award will recognize a senior from a public high school for an original poem, and the Read more >
On this day in 1937, the prolific author Walter Dean Myers was born Walter Milton Myers in Martinsburg, West Virginia. The three-time National Book Award finalist was known for his realistic, groundbreaking, affecting portrayals of the Black urban experience, which Read more >
Lit Hub is pleased to reveal the cover for Kim Fu’s debut short story collection, Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century, which will be published by Tin House next year. The publisher describes the book like this: In the Read more >
Today is David Brooks’s 60th birthday. Congratulations! It’s also been four years since his 2017 op-ed “How We Are Ruining America,” where he made the case that differing social norms, more than structural barriers, segregate Americans by class. In said Read more >
Last week, a Twitter account claiming to be Cormac McCarthy went viral, delighted thousands of readers, was verified by Twitter, was confirmed fake by McCarthy’s publisher and agent, and finally, was suspended. Now, the New York Daily News has revealed Read more >
Dolly Parton is already the fairy godmother of readers around the world: her Imagination Library sends over one million free books per month (that’s one book every two seconds!) to children ages 0-5 in the United States, Canada, the U.K., Read more >
Recently, corners of the literary world have been grappling with a surprising gender gap: for the past few years, many of the most high-profile novels have been written by women. But conversations about literature as a field of women-writing-women are Read more >
Spending time in a bookstore is always its own kind of magic. What awaits you at your local indie is nothing short of wizardry! Books allow you to jump into different worlds and occupy other timelines. They let you walk Read more >
