The Rona Jaffe Awards, which have awarded six emerging women writers $30,000 grants per year since the awards’ founding by novelist Rona Jaffe in 1995, have been officially discontinued. In an announcement now posted to the Rona Jaffe Foundation’s website Read more >
In Laura Marsh’s excellent review of Blake Bailey’s new biography of Philip Roth, she references a few of Roth’s early writing projects, including one that has, for the last 24 hours, consumed my imagination: “He submitted a satire of ‘ornithologists’ Read more >
In honor of the 182nd anniversary of the first-ever appearance in print of O.K. (in The Boston Morning Post) I am here to start an internet copyediting war. As you can see, the original “O.K.” was very clearly an acronym, Read more >
Today, the board of The Paris Review Foundation announced the appointment of the next editor of The Paris Review: Emily Stokes, who will become only the sixth editor in the magazine’s sixty-eight years. Stokes has recently been a senior editor at The Read more >
Rejoice! Spring has sprung! Tulips are popping up to say hello! I even saw an ice cream truck the other day. Plus, if you layer up and stay strictly in the sun, you might feel a semblance of warmth. Dare Read more >
Today, Yale University announced the winners of its Windham-Campbell Prizes, which celebrate extraordinary literary achievement by rewarding eight writers an unrestricted grant of $165,000 to support their creative projects. The Award, now in its 8th year, was the brainchild of Read more >
Last week, Cabinet Magazine published a wonderful deep dive by Matthew Rubery on the origins of the audiobook as a form. It’s worth reading in full, but it also features a fun historical curiosity: a wax cylinder recording of Alfred Read more >
Another gorgeous place to wistfully imagine visiting: a new library will exhibit the literature of playwright Henrik Ibsen in his birthplace of Skien, Norway. It’s not surprising that the design is staggeringly beautiful; in collaboration with Mad Arkitekter, it’s designed Read more >
The world is a dumpster fire, but sometimes, there are bright spots that can offer much-needed relief. For instance: everyone’s favorite bedtime story, Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown, is now the inspiration behind an immersive group exhibition in New York Read more >
Here’s some exciting Monday book news: HarperOne has purchased the world rights to Ijeoma Oluo’s nonfiction title Be a Revolution. Oluo is the author of the bestselling books So You Want to Talk About Race, a user-friendly introduction to engaging Read more >
First of all, I assume you’ve all seen those videos of toddlers interacting with print magazines, trying to swipe and pinch the printed page to make it go? I do not like those videos. But are digital books worse for Read more >
Let’s be honest: all writers sort of hate writing. At least some of the time! (It’s hard.) That includes Douglas Adams, author of beloved cult classic and frequent late ’90s Bat Mitzvah theme The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, who once Read more >
Nona Fernández’s The Twilight Zone, Alec MacGillis’ Fulfillment, Jo Ann Beard’s Festival Days, and Glenn Frankel’s Shooting Midnight Cowboyall feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. Brought to you by Book Marks, Lit Hub’s “Rotten Tomatoes for books.” Read more >
If the last year has taught us anything, it’s that Austin’s (Lincoln-drivin’, Wild Turkey-suppin’, Longhorns-boostin’, emergency-broadcastin’, naked bongo-playin’, UT professorin’) favorite son, Matthew David McConaughey, is actually a far busier man than his famously laid-back public persona would suggest. Consider Read more >
Honoré de Balzac, known for his sweeping portrayals of the individuals that make up a nation, is survived by his famous multi-volume project La Comédie humaine. But you may not know that he was also a playwright—and the reason you Read more >
Haruki Murakami fans are living high on the hog: they’ve got themed shirts, music events, video games, radio shows, and an archival library. And here’s one more thing to add to the mix: dedicated fan Masamaro Fujiki has made a Read more >
If you’ve ever spent any serious time on Zillow (and if you’re between the ages of 30 and 45 you probably have?) you’ll know that people make some pretty wild and terrible decisions with their homes. It’s no surprise, then, Read more >
You may have noticed that here at Literary Hub, we’re pretty big fans of Octavia Butler—and especially of Kindred, arguably her most famous novel. So we were very excited by the recent news that that 42-year-old book is finally getting an adaptation: FX Read more >
Here’s a delightful Friday diversion: Mapologies, a blog that charts regional linguistic differences (did you know that there were more than five different words for “flip-flop” in Spanish-speaking South America?), etymologies (like the word origin of “blue” in countries across Read more >
John Updike, with one notable exception, was an incredibly kind reviewer. Patricia Lockwood, in her London Review of Books survey of Updike’s work, observed Updike’s criticism “was not just game and generous but able, as his fiction is not, to Read more >
