The Hub

News, Notes, Talk

Peek inside a new illustrated edition of Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus.

The Folio Society has recently released a new edition of weird girl classic Nights at the Circus, beautifully illustrated by British artist and printmaker Eileen Cooper and with an introduction by Sarah Waters. “I describe the method I used as “print-based Read more >

By Emily Temple

Announcing the winners of the PEN/Bellwether Prize and the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize.

Today, Literary Hub is pleased to announce the winners of PEN America’s two “early career” prizes for writers: the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction and the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. “Taken together, these prizes Read more >

By Rasheeda Saka

17 new books to look forward to.

Dear reader, I have two recommendations for you. The first recommendation is going to the freezer aisle of your local grocery store and taking home a big box of frozen mini eclairs. The second recommendation is going to your local Read more >

By Katie Yee

Dr. Seuss Enterprises ceases publication of six titles because of racist stereotypes.

Complicating conservative claims yesterday that progressives are desperate to cancel Dr. Seuss (rhymes with Joyce), the foundation itself responsible for the legacy of the beloved children’s author announced they will be ceasing publication of six of his books (Seuss-rhymes-with-Joyce wrote Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

Everything you need to know about the controversy over a new translation of Amanda Gorman's poetry.

The Associated Press has reported that Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, the Dutch poet appointed by the Dutch publisher Meulenhoff to translate Amanda Gorman’s “The Hill We Climb” and her first poetry collection into Dutch, has stepped down after criticism that a Read more >

By Walker Caplan

Akwaeke Emezi is publishing a romance novel inspired by Florence + The Machine.

Akwaeke Emezi (Freshwater, Pet, The Death of Vivek Oji) is making their romance debut with You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty. The novel, which will be published in 2022 by Atria, centers on “a young artist struggling to Read more >

By Vanessa Willoughby

What's the most-filmed bookstore in the world?

There’s something thrilling about watching a movie or a TV show and finding that you recognize the characters’ surroundings— that you have stood on that street corner or peered into that shop before the characters, before that story begins. As Read more >

By Katie Yee

Why do we keep pretending that The Time Traveler's Wife is a love story?

We’ve known for a while that HBO was working on turning Audrey Niffenegger’s 2003 novel The Time Traveler’s Wife into a series. The show, which boasts Doctor Who and Sherlock writer Steven Moffat as a writer and executive producer, is Read more >

By Vanessa Willoughby

Can Ta-Nehisi Coates make the world's most boring superhero interesting?

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s… more superhero adaptation news! But this time, with some welcome literary cred: Deadline has just announced that Ta-Nehisi Coates will be writing the screenplay for the latest Superman reboot. J.J. Abrams is producing, and Henry Cavill Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

One nice thing: four longtime friends have founded a literary journal for poetry by women over 50.

Four friends from Delaware have founded an online poetry journal that showcases the work of women over fifty years of age. Quartet is named after the bond between the four founders—Linda Blaskey, Gail Comorat, Jane Miller, and Wendy Ingersoll Perry—and Read more >

By Walker Caplan

Astra Publishing House is launching an international literary magazine.

Astra Publishing House has announced they are launching a new literary magazine, Astra Quarterly, which will start publishing online this fall and in print by the end of 2021. Astra Quarterly will have a strong international focus; it will have Read more >

By Walker Caplan

You can now read Jeremy O. Harris’s YELL from the comfort of your own home.

Happily for us, Jeremy O. Harris is prolific, so we constantly have new work of his to look forward to. Currently, he’s writing the HBO series adaptation of The Vanishing Half with Aziza Barnes, guest starring on the forthcoming A24 Read more >

By Walker Caplan

Olga Tokarczuk's "magnum opus" has finally been translated into English (and you can read it soon).

After a very long translation process—seven years of work!—Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk’s greatest novel will soon be available to English readers. Fitzcarraldo Editions will publish The Books of Jacob, translated by Jennifer Croft, in the UK this November, and Riverhead Read more >

By Emily Temple

We finally have a release date (and trailer!) for Barry Jenkins' The Underground Railroad.

Good news for all you Jenkophiles and Whiteheadheads out there: after four maddening months of mystery—which saw the release of two gorgeous teaser trailers but no premiere date—we now know when we’ll be able to watch Barry Jenkins’ small-screen adaptation Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

When Tennessee Williams was 16, he won a writing contest by pretending to be a disgruntled divorcee.

On the 38th anniversary of Tennessee Williams’s death, we’re remembering his very first published piece of writing, written way before he was a literary giant—and even before he used his own name. (Well, his assumed name, but still.) As a Read more >

By Walker Caplan

Samuel Beckett's insane wordless post-Nobel Prize "interview" is the most Samuel Beckett thing ever.

Waiting for Godot author Samuel Beckett’s work embraced experimentation and nonsense—and, it appears from this video, his life did as well. In 1969, Beckett learned he had received the 1969 Nobel Prize in Literature via a telegram from his publisher, Read more >

By Walker Caplan

An ode to the first Internet novel.

Since you’re on here, you know that it is the month of the Internet novel. Two heavy-hitters in particular—Lauren Oyler’s Fake Accounts and Patricia Lockwood’s No One Is Talking about This—have been brought into the world, and everyone on Book Twitter Read more >

By Katie Yee

Nico Walker has seen the film adaptation of his book, and he’s not impressed.

The movie adaptation of Nico Walker’s Cherry—the best-selling debut novel about an Iraq veteran turned heroin addict turned bank robber—will be released in theaters in two days, directed by the Russo Brothers (who you might know from Avengers) and starring Read more >

By Walker Caplan

Edvard Munch taking criticism badly is all of us.

If you’ve ever gotten a bad critique in workshop and thought about it for, well, years, you’re in good company: the company of The Scream artist Edvard Munch. We’ve known for a while that a pencil inscription at the top Read more >

By Walker Caplan

Watch a supercut of typewriters being used on screen.

Need a break from writing? Or some cinematic inspiration to begin writing? Or, just really like typewriters? Then perhaps I can interest you in two minutes, four seconds of typewriters on screen, set to Leroy Anderson’s irrepressibly jaunty “The Typewriter.” Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor