This week, a Lit Hub reader wrote in to inform me of what is at the very least an entertaining conspiracy theory unspooling over at the Thomas Pynchon subreddit (where the upvotes are +1 Pynchon head and the downvotes are Read more >
Writers, here’s a little fun Thursday lunchtime activity for you. Think about the story you’re currently working on/avoiding. What shape does it take? Get a pen and some paper and trace it out. On the axis of good fortune versus Read more >
Those who have been paying attention to local education news and the critical race theory debate know that many school districts are battling over what materials can be kept in libraries and taught in classrooms. The battle is making its Read more >
A recent survey conducted by OnePoll for ThriftBooks, which polled 2,000 Americans about their novel-writing and novel-reading habits, found that 55% of respondents think their life stories are interesting enough to be immortalized in fiction. That seems like a lot, Read more >
The holiday season is quickly approaching (!), and I’m sure you’ve been thinking about what to buy your friends and loved ones. Well, how about a personalized postcard from a favorite author? The Common just kicked off its eighth annual Read more >
Some alarming news, though it’s not surprising if you’ve been paying attention to local education news and the critical race theory debate: a new report from PEN America catalogues a concerning wave of legislative efforts to limit teaching and learning Read more >
On this glorious day, 15 years ago, Stranger Than Fiction came into the world. It is arguably the best movie about writer’s block, dramatic irony, fate, the unknowability of death, and the gray space between what is “real” and what is Read more >
Today in things that should definitely not be possible: Ocean Vuong received a torrent of real-time reviews from a horde of confused Australian teenagers on Instagram after they tried to interpret his writing for an exam. Students in Australia take Read more >
Now we have Villaneuve’s Dune, and we have Lynch’s Dune, but both are very different from the Dune we could have had if movie studios found some extra money to play with in the 1970s. Director Alejandro Jodorowsky began to Read more >
Lit Hub is pleased to reveal the cover for Morgan Talty’s debut story collection, Night of the Living Rez, which will be published by Tin House Books in summer 2022. Talty noted that he “wanted to write a collection that Read more >
On this day in 1960, bookstores across England sold out of Lady Chatterley’s Lover. The day after its publication—and one month after Penguin Books prevailed in an obscenity trial, winning the right to publish the book in full in the Read more >
Today, the Whiting Foundation announced this year’s recipients of the $40,000 Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant, which supports “original, ambitious projects that bring writing to the highest possible standard,” and which is intended to bolster writers who are already knee-deep in Read more >
As Seven Days reports, the writers of a COVID-skeptical book and their publisher, Vermont publisher Chelsea Green, are suing Senator Elizabeth Warren for stifling their free speech by asking Amazon to alter their algorithms to lower the impact of COVID-19 misinformation. Read more >
Last night, Omar El Akkad was announced as the winner of the prestigious Scotiabank Giller Prize, for his novel What Strange Paradise. The prize, established in 1994, seeks to celebrate excellence in Canadian fiction, and offers C$100,000 to the winning author—the Read more >
Today is the birthday of the late Pulitzer Prize-winning astronomer, professor, and science writer Carl Sagan, otherwise known as Carl Sagan Day. Born in Brooklyn in 1934, Sagan was an avid fan of science fiction at an early age; he Read more >
On this day in 1953, at the still-young age of 39, the “roistering, drunken and doomed” Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, author of some of the most beloved verse of the 20th century, passed away. The story most often told about Read more >
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