The Hub

News, Notes, Talk

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

I think about this tiny detail from The Talented Mr. Ripley all the time.

I love every inch of The Talented Mr. Ripley. I think every writer should read it—mostly because it’s a pleasure from start to finish, but it doesn’t hurt that there is so much to learn from Patricia Highsmith about pacing, Read more >

By Emily Temple

Lawrence Ferlinghetti, a literary icon who opened doors for the Beat Generation, has died at 101.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti—a crucial supporter of the Beat movement and literary icon who bore a century’s worth of witness to social and political transformation—died on Monday at the age of 101 of interstitial lung disease, The Washington Post confirmed. Ferlinghetti epitomized Read more >

By Corinne Segal

According to data, Black and Latinx Millennials are keeping the book industry alive.

Surprisingly, despite the heavy toll taken by the COVID-19 pandemic on brick and mortar bookstores (especially independent brick and mortar bookstores) nationwide, US book sales actually increased by 8 percent in 2020. What demographic is responsible for keeping the industry Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

A PBS episode about Flannery O’Connor will feature interviews with Hilton Als and Mary Karr.

For Flannery O’Connor enthusiasts and critics alike: PBS’s next episode in their American Masters biographical series focuses on Flannery O’Connor. The episode premieres on March 23rd and, as per PBS, features never-before-seen archival footage and newly discovered journals of O’Connor’s. Read more >

By Walker Caplan

There's now a library in space (sort of).

If you love space (or have a four year old [or both!]) you know that the Perseverance rover landed on the celestial planet Mars on Thursday. The mission will least one year on Mars, which means it will last 637 Read more >

By Emily Firetog

Charles Yu has established a creative writing prize in honor of his parents.

National Book Award-winning fiction writer and former story editor for HBO’s Westworld (back in Season 1, before it jumped the RoboShark) Charles Yu, in collaboration with TaiwaneseAmerican.org, has created the Betty L. Yu and Jin C. Yu Creative Writing Prizes, “intended Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

Feast your eyes on this gorgeous Tokyo bookshop-slash-hotel.

While we’re all still in varying levels of lockdown, here’s a new travel destination to dream about: Book and Bed Tokyo. Book and Bed is an “accommodation bookshop”: a bookstore first, hostel second, so avid readers don’t need to pay Read more >

By Walker Caplan

Hillary Clinton is . . . coming for Stacey Abrams's literary crown?

As the age-old advice goes, “Write what you know.” For Hillary Clinton, apparently this means pivoting from writing dense memoirs about “hard choices” and nonfiction books about women’s empowerment to . . . political fan fiction thinly disguised as a Read more >

By Vanessa Willoughby

Today in late capitalism: Here is a coloring book that teaches children about credit.

Can you think of a single feel-good news story from the past five years that isn’t, at its core, an indictment of the society in which we live? Here at Lit Hub, one of our most-read stories last year was Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor