The Hub

News, Notes, Talk

Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi and Patrice Lawrence have won the Jhalak prize for writers of color.

Some literary award news from across the pond: the winners of this year’s Jhalak Prize—an annual award for a British or British-resident writer of color—have been revealed. At last night’s virtual ceremony, Ugandan novelist and short story writer Jennifer Nansubuga Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

You can now buy E.L. Doctorow’s gorgeous Manhattan home, for just $2.1 million.

Exciting news for Ragtime fans, or fans of glamorous apartments: the pre-war Midtown East co-op where E.L. Doctorow wrote his final three novels is on sale for $2.1 million. The 3000-square-foot apartment contains Doctorow’s office; two en-suite bedrooms with walk-in Read more >

By Walker Caplan

Haruki Murakami has "never thought about" changing the way he writes female characters.

Prolific author, radio DJ, and T-shirt designer Haruki Murakami has a reputation for being somewhat reclusive—but that doesn’t mean he’s managed to avoid controversy entirely. Though he’s been praised for his characterization of the female narrator of “Sleep,” every so Read more >

By Walker Caplan

"Get in, get out. Don't linger. Go on." Read Raymond Carver's greatest writing advice.

Raymond Carver was born 83 years ago, in Clatskanie, Oregon. Later, he would cement his position as one of America’s greatest and most beloved writers and poets, a true master of the short story form. Carver is one of those Read more >

By Emily Temple

Attention, Geriatric Millennials: BOOK IT! is now a camp (and still involves Personal Pan Pizza).

If you were a kid in the 90s living in the US, you can probably trace your love of reading to the promise of free Personal Pan Pizzas. In case you’re not part of Twitter’s most vocal demographic, BOOK IT! Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

18 new books to read on the beach this week.

Eighteen new books coming in hot! Any book is a beach read if you read it on the beach, right? * Salman Rushdie, Languages of Truth (Random House) “Formidably erudite, engagingly passionate, and endlessly informative: a literary treat.” –Kirkus Steven Read more >

By Katie Yee

LARPers are learning swordfighting techniques from this medieval Italian manuscript.

In the popular imagination, the LARPer is a figure of fun: a nerd transplanted from their Dungeons & Dragons game into a real-life clearing, dressed in wizard robes or elf ears, possibly a wand or foam sword in hand. But Read more >

By Walker Caplan

It’s possible Boris Johnson skipped critical COVID meetings to write a book on Shakespeare.

Looks like Boris Johnson was inspired by Shakespeare’s quarantine productivity: according to The Sunday Times, Dominic Cummings—former aide to the prime minister, Brexit leader, and COVID-positive road-tripper—plans to claim in a COVID-related parliamentary inquiry on Wednesday that Johnson skipped numerous Read more >

By Walker Caplan

A brand new imprint will focus on publishing diasporic Vietnamese literature in English.

Today marks the announcement of Ink & Blood, a new joint imprint from Kaya Press and the Diasporic Vietnamese Artist Network (DVAN), focused on the publication of diasporic Vietnamese literature in English. The first book to be translated in the Read more >

By Walker Caplan

John Steinbeck wrote a werewolf murder mystery, but you can't read it.

Before Nobel Laureate John Steinbeck became an essential part of the Western literary canon, he was an unpublished writer with three rejected novels to his name. (Relatable!) Apparently, one of these novels was a mystery called Murder at Full Moon, Read more >

By Vanessa Willoughby

On the delightfully odd homes of Margaret Wise Brown.

It all started at 118 Milton Street in Brooklyn. In this house, beloved children’s book author Margaret Wise Brown was born. Even though she only spent the first five years of her life there, for a children’s book author especially, Read more >

By Katie Yee

The week's best book drama is happening in the Times letters to the editor.

If you, like me, love low-stakes literary gossip but hate Twitter, you should probably be reading the New York Times books section’s letters to the editor. Case in point: Cynthia Ozick’s recent response-in-verse to Lionel Shriver’s review of her novella, Antiquities.  The Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

Salman Rushdie has weighed in on the Philip Roth biography controversy.

Earlier this week, we learned that Skyhorse Publishing is set to republish Blake Bailey’s Phillip Roth: The Biography after the book’s initial publisher, W.W. Norton, put the book out of print due to extensive, corroborated reports that Bailey had groomed, Read more >

By Walker Caplan

Here are the best reviewed books of the week.

Francis Spufford’s Light Perpetual, Claire Fuller’s Unsettled Ground, Sarah Schulman’s Let the Record Show, and Aminatta Forna’s The Window Seat all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. Brought to you by Book Marks, Lit Hub’s “Rotten Tomatoes for Read more >

By Book Marks

Here's the winner of the 2021 Helen & Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize.

Germany’s Goethe-Institut has just announced the winner of this year’s Helen & Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize, the German government-funded prize celebrating an outstanding literary translation from German into English published in the U.S. in the previous year. This year’s winner Read more >

By Walker Caplan

The language of blurbs, decoded.

Unflinching: This book is written in the present tense, which I told the author multiple times was a choice I disagreed with in our writing workshop. Do you belong to a writing workshop? Oh, you really must. They’re fantastic. Bracing: You Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

Peek inside Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s annotated law school textbook.

Exciting news—or dispiriting news for would-be collectors: a Columbia Law School textbook once owned by late Supreme Court justice and legal titan Ruth Bader Ginsburg sold yesterday to an anonymous bidder for $18,125 in Heritage Auctions’ Manuscripts Auction. The textbook Read more >

By Walker Caplan

Doubleday is doubling down on Stacey Abrams thrillers.

Fresh off the barnstorming success of her debut political thriller (While Justice Sleeps has shifted over 130,000 copies since its publication earlier this month), beloved Georgia politician and voting rights activist Stacey Abrams has just sold two more Avery Keane Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

Two of India's most famous writers are protesting the reissue of a Narendra Modi exam book.

Pankaj Mishra and Arundhati Roy, two of India’s most prominent and world-renowned authors, have this week spoken out against Penguin Random House India’s decision to republish Exam Warriors, a book of exam tips and advice by embattled Prime Minister Narendra Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

Bob's Burgers is the most literary TV show ever. (Arguably, anyway.)

Originally, I wanted to find every literary reference in Bob’s Burgers, but the truth is there were too many to count. This is a very culturally with-it show. I would argue it rivals Gilmore Girls in the number of writers and book Read more >

By Katie Yee