The Hub

News, Notes, Talk

Cover reveal: There's A Revolution Outside, My Love, Tracy K. Smith and John Freeman, eds.

Lit Hub is pleased to reveal the cover of There’s A Revolution Outside, My Love (edited by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Tracy K. Smith and founder of Freeman’s John Freeman), which will be published in May 2021. The cover was designed by Read more >

By Literary Hub

"It's incredibly lazy and depressingly effective." John Oliver on Fox News's Dr. Seuss antics.

If you have somehow missed the ongoing conversation around the recent “cancellation” of Dr. Seuss (read: his own foundation’s decision to let certain books with racist imagery to go out of print), well, bless you. But even if, like me, Read more >

By Emily Temple

Can you sit through all 9 minutes of this Bret Easton Ellis-directed sunglasses ad?

You probably know that Bret Easton Ellis is not only a novelist but a director, but did you know that he once directed a nine (9) minute long ad Persol sunglasses? (And do you hate that that string of words Read more >

By Katie Yee

Here are the best reviewed books of the week.

Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun, Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Committed, Stephen King’s Later, and Isabel Allende’s The Soul of a Woman all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. Brought to you by Book Marks, Lit Hub’s “Rotten Read more >

By Book Marks

Back in 1986, the Castros helped retrieve Hemingway's stolen Nobel Prize.

The period leading up to Ernest Hemingway’s 1954 Nobel Prize win was a pretty nightmarish one for Papa. Debilitating health problems (migraines, high blood pressure, liver disease, diabetes), near-fatal accidents (two plane crashes in as many days while vacationing in Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

Here is your definitive ranking of Bret Easton Ellis film adaptations, from best to worst.

Did you know? Bret Easton Ellis was born this weekend (March 7, to be exact) in 1964. In honor (?) of this highly problematic Pisces, I’ve ranked all the movies that have been adapted from his books. I am aware Read more >

By Vanessa Willoughby

Ray Romano covers Beyoncé in the first Made for Love trailer.

Yes, you read that headline correctly. The first trailer for Made for Love—the upcoming HBO adaptation of Alyssa Nutting’s batshit 2017 novel—has hit the internet, and it is weird in all the most wondrous ways. Chief among them: the dulcet Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

10 writers we’d like to see as politicians.

On this day in 1945, ardent lover of the working class man (and woman, of all classes) Pablo Neruda was elected as a communist senator for the northern Chilean provinces. Neruda, long an admirer of Vladimir Lenin, saw the Soviet Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

Anonymous Content is turning Detransition, Baby into a tv show.

Wonderful news, and not a moment too soon! Deadline reported this morning that Torrey Peters’s novel Detransition, Baby is in development as a half-hour dramedy. It’s being developed by Anonymous Content, the production company behind Being John Malkovich, Spotlight, True Read more >

By Walker Caplan

An audio deepfake of Gucci Mane can now read you classic books.

Weird news of the day: the viral creation collective MSCHF has used machine learning to create an audio deepfake of rapper Gucci Mane reading classic texts. MSCHF collected six hours of audio from podcasts and interviews, transcribed them, and created Read more >

By Walker Caplan

Kazuo Ishiguro thinks artificial intelligence could replace human novelists.

Kazuo Ishiguro’s new novel Klara and the Sun, which follows a robot as she tries to understand the human world, has been praised as “a masterpiece about life, love, and mortality” and “a work that makes us feel afresh the Read more >

By Walker Caplan

A Sylvia Plath fan has petitioned the Church to allow her to be buried near the poet.

Sylvia Plath’s grave has been the subject of fascination for many since her death in 1963; over the last decades, the poet’s tombstone, which sits in a parish graveyard in Heptonstall, has attracted tourists, “feminist vandals,” and thieves alike. Now, Read more >

By Emily Temple

Joy Williams' first novel in 20 years is coming this fall.

While we don’t know what the state of the our pandemic society will be come September, we can at least be sure that we’ll all be getting a little Joy Williams, as a treat. Specifically, a new novel—her fifth, and Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

Two of my favorite writers died this day. Here’s why you should read them.

Two of my favorite writers died on this day, 14 years apart: Georges Perec in 1982 and Marguerite Duras in 1996. I have read the latter in French but not the former, though I suspect it is Perec who warrants Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

Here's the best writing advice from Colson Whitehead’s 60 Minutes interview.

If you’re going to listen to anyone about the process of writing, Colson Whitehead is a pretty good choice: the MacArthur Genius Grant recipient won back-to-back Pulitzers for his novels The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys, making him the Read more >

By Walker Caplan

Now you can adopt Jennifer Egan.

Have you been going back and forth on whether or not do adopt a furry best friend for the past year? Did that one very recent New Yorker story about loving difficult animals make you cry?  Do you love books? Read more >

By Katie Yee

A breakthrough technology allows researchers to see inside sealed centuries-old letters.

Yesterday, The Guardian reported that for the first time in history, researchers were able to read an unopened letter without breaking the seal. The international team of researchers, led by Jana Dambrogio and Amanda Ghassaei, used a technique they developed Read more >

By Walker Caplan

D.H. Lawrence was the king of innuendo—but wouldn't admit it.

91 years ago today marks the death of D.H. Lawrence, who E.M. Forster called “the greatest imaginative novelist of our generation” and whose writing Joseph Conrad called “Filth . . . nothing but obscenities.” Both can be true; today we’re Read more >

By Walker Caplan

Here are the finalists for the 2020-21 L.A. Times Book Prize.

Today the Los Angeles Times announced the finalists for its 2020-21 Book Prize, which recognizes and honors outstanding literary work published in the last year. The 55 finalists were selected across 11 categories—Biography, Current Interest, Fiction, Graphic Novels/Comics, History, Mystery/Thriller, Read more >

By Rasheeda Saka

Haruki Murakami has designed a Haruki Murakami-themed T-shirt collection for UNIQLO.

Haruki Murakami has something of a reputation for being reclusive, but strangely—and happily—Murakami fans have had plenty of Murakami-related content to chew on during the pandemic. He’s running an ongoing radio program; he hosted a bossa nova jam; a public Read more >

By Walker Caplan