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News, Notes, Talk

A Shakespearean parody of the upcoming Shakespearean parody of The Avengers.

Two franchises alike in type of work, One Marvel, one that puts out parodies, That’s called Quirk Books, the main word being “quirk”; They’re behind Pride and Prejudice and Zombies— From forth their fertile loins comes a collab Which any Read more >

By Walker Caplan

Here are the best reviewed books of the week.

Andrea Lee’s Red Island House, Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan’s Francis Bacon, Andrew J. Graff’s Raft of Stars, and Alexander Nemerov’s Fierce Poise all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. Brought to you by Book Marks, Lit Hub’s Read more >

By Book Marks

Dear Amazon: Why can’t we sell our ebook on your platform?

Dear Amazon, We are writing today in response to your refusal to publish our most recent ebook, written by an emerging author who has not yet published a book of her own. In doing so, we wonder whether we are Read more >

By The Massachusetts Review

Just what you never knew you always wanted: a playlist of Jane Austen’s favorite songs.

Regardless of our feelings toward Emma’s Mrs. Elton, we can agree with her sentiment that “without music, life would be a blank”—so it’s a happy occasion that Colorado Public Radio, aided by Austen scholar Joan Ray, has assembled a playlist Read more >

By Walker Caplan

Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove author (and sly American existentialist), dies at 84.

Larry McMurtry, storyteller and subversive mythmaker of the American west, has died at age 84. Best known for his Lonesome Dove tetralogy—and the blockbuster TV miniseries that followed—McMurtry was a prolific writer of novels, screenplays, essays, and more, whose keen Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

Read Tennessee Williams’s first published short story. (It’s weird.)

Today would be Tennessee Williams’s 110th birthday; to celebrate, we’re looking way back to before his storied career, when he was a teenager that knew he wanted to be a writer. When Williams was sixteen, he made his fiction debut Read more >

By Walker Caplan

The best writing advice I've ever read comes from Robert Frost.

I write prose, not poetry, but the most helpful piece of advice I’ve ever read was written by a poet: Robert Frost, who was born 147 years ago today. In the second, expanded edition of his Collected Poems, published in 1939, Read more >

By Emily Temple

Here are the winners of this year's National Book Critics Circle awards.

This evening, during a virtual event, the National Book Critics Circle announced the recipients of its 2020 book awards, spread across six categories, and also awarded the previously announced Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award (to the Feminist Press) and Nona Read more >

By Emily Temple

Book workers are declaring their support for Amazon employees' union drive.

Book industry professionals from around the country are declaring this Friday a Book Workers Day of Solidarity with Amazon employees in Bessemer, Alabama, whose fight for unionization continues to draw national attention. Employees of more than two dozen publishers, along Read more >

By Corinne Segal

Carmen Maria Machado has won the Rathbones Folio Prize for In the Dream House.

In a unanimous decision by the judges, Carmen Maria Machado has been awarded the £30,000 Rathbones Folio Prize for her genre-bending memoir In the Dream House. Machado joins an illustrious list of former winners since the prize was founded in Read more >

By Walker Caplan

This online reading platform that mines kids' preferences to create new books is deeply creepy.

Maybe it’s just because I am an Old, but when I read about the data collection activities of Epic—an online reading platform that, in fairness, is free to schools and has helped kids access digital library books during the pandemic—I Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

Here's the shortlist for the 2021 International DUBLIN Literary Award.

The shortlist for the 2021 International DUBLIN Literary Award, six books chosen from a longlist of nominations from public libraries around the world, has been released. The winner will be announced in May 2021, and will receive a prize of Read more >

By Walker Caplan

Americans and debuts dominate the shortlist for the 2021 Dylan Thomas Prize.

The Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize, one of the UK’s most prestigious literary awards as well as the largest literary prize for writers 39 and under, has released its shortlist for the 2021 award. This year, US-based authors dominate the Read more >

By Walker Caplan

Renaissance man David Duchovny is about to do the impossible.

Plenty of writers have adapted, or had a hand in adapting, their own novels for the screen. Gillian Flynn did it with Gone Girl. John Irving did it with The Cider House Rules. Nick Horby did it with Fever Pitch. William Peter Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

A new original draft of Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” has just been discovered.

Angel-headed hipsters rejoice: a new carbon typescript of Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” has been discovered by rare books dealer and Beats specialist Brian Cassidy among the papers of Annie Ruff. It’s a big discovery—the newly discovered “Howl” typescript is an early Read more >

By Walker Caplan

This former Late Show with Stephen Colbert writer has some tips for writing humor.

If you listen to enough comedians talk about comedy, you’ll be asked to hold a paradox in your mind: humor is completely subjective and intuitive, and also there are one thousand techniques you can use—and in fact that you should Read more >

By Walker Caplan

Exclusive cover reveal: Tomás Morín's Machete.

Lit Hub is pleased to reveal the cover for Tomás Morín’s latest poetry collection, Machete, which will be published by Knopf this October. Knopf describes Machete as “a lyrical, dynamic, insightful collection, at once delicate and fierce, touching on climate, Read more >

By Literary Hub

Here are the winners of the 2021 J. Anthony Lukas Prize Project Awards.

Today, the Columbia School of Journalism and the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard announced the 4 winners and 2 finalists of the 2021 J. Anthony Lukas Prize Project Awards, which honors the best American nonfiction writing of the previous Read more >

By Rasheeda Saka

North Jersey officials are trying to shut down a Little Free Library because of "zoning."

In a shocking tale of bureaucracy making life worse, NorthJersey.com has reported that officials of Oradell, New Jersey, are demanding that a local woman take down the Little Free Library she erected in her front yard. Why? Apparently, it violates Read more >

By Walker Caplan

Vincent D'Onofrio wrote a book, and it looks insane and wonderful.

Legendary character actor and straight-up delightful twitterer (seriously, if haven’t spent any time on his feed, well, I truly don’t know what you’ve been doing with your online life), Vincent D’Onofrio is releasing his first book—an irreverent hybrid work of poetry and prose entitled Mutha: Stuff Read more >

By Dan Sheehan