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News, Notes, Talk

Now you can check(mate) in to a Queen's Gambit-inspired hotel room.

In the perfect collision of quarantine binge-watching and post-quarantine travel dreaming, the 21c Museum Hotel in Lexington, Kentucky has created a Queen’s Gambit-inspired hotel room (the Harmon Room), complete with swinging sixties decor and a ceiling chess set (though presumably Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

Josh Hawley, after inciting a violent, bloody insurrection, has his book canceled.

By now you’ve all probably seen Senator Josh Hawley—the heir apparent to Donald Trump’s dogwhistling, populist demagoguery—getting widely trounced on Twitter for not quite knowing what “Orwellian” means. But, to recap: · Wednesday around noon, Josh Hawley, after inciting for Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

Bookmarked: Philadelphia's poet laureate has launched a "healing poetry" telephone line.

While “self-care” is a phrase that gets thrown around almost indiscriminately in These Times, the Healing Verse Philly Poetry Line, created by Philadelphia poet laureate Trapeta B. Mayson, feels like the truest form of it. The toll-free line will feature Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

Today is a good day to support the Free Black Women's Library.

I am interrupting your doom-scroll to tell you about the existence of the Free Black Women’s Library, a trading library and “interactive biblio installation” that celebrates the voices of Black women in literature. What started in 2015 as a popup Read more >

By Katie Yee

Watch this forgotten short film written by Dr. Seuss.

Today in 1986 we lost the great P.D. Eastman, who was known for his work under the Dr. Seuss brand of Random House—children’s staples like Go, Dog. Go! and Are You My Mother? But Eastman was also a screenwriter and Read more >

By Walker Caplan

Can we please have a version of this competitive Indian “writers reality show” in America?

As a rank purveyor of lists and, well, rankings, we here at Literary Hub Consolidated Book Chatter Inc. are not infrequently admonished for introducing too much competition into the hallowed vocation of “writing stuff.” Well, I am here to push Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

2020 was a great year for at least one thing: digital book loans from public libraries.

If you, like me, could really use some nice library-oriented news right about now, you’re in luck. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the impossibility of going to physical libraries for much of the year, readers borrowed record numbers of ebooks, audiobooks, and Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

Tiffany Haddish to star in an adaptation of M.T. Anderson’s Landscape with Invisible Hand.

2021 is already starting off right (movie-wise, at least): Deadline has just announced that Tiffany Haddish is in final negotiations to star in the screen adaptation of National Book Award winner M.T. Anderson’s sci-fi novel Landscape with Invisible Hand, which will Read more >

By Walker Caplan

Here's 33 writers on why they write.

It’s 2021, but (surprise!) essentially nothing has changed: COVID is still ravaging the United States and no meaningful government aid has arrived. Oh, one thing has changed: a new, more contagious variant of COVID has spread to the U.S. Happy Read more >

By Walker Caplan

Do you a) have $79,000 and b) want to own a library?

If you don’t start every morning by scrolling through the palatial homes on @cheapoldhouses before stumbling two (2) feet over to your desk in your four hundred (400) square foot studio, I don’t understand you. This is what we millennials do, Read more >

By Katie Yee

Will 2021 bring the Jonathan Franzen vs. Jennifer Egan rematch we've been anticipating for a decade?

Think back, if you will, to the simpler time that was 2010. That summer, both Jennifer Egan and Jonathan Franzen published novels—but not just any novels. Both Freedom and A Visit From the Goon Squad were critically acclaimed, commercially successful, prize-winning novels. They were Read more >

By Emily Temple

‘TS Eliot is the worst living poet.’ Literary burn book featuring Virginia Woolf up for sale.

It is hard not see this candid collection of very strong opinions—from the likes of Virginia Woolf, Rebecca West, Hilaire Belloc, and more—as something like the published DMs of today’s literary Twitter. In response to a series of quiz questions Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

Here's a nice, low-stakes problem: the Royal Mint's HG Wells coin is riddled with errors.

In a world where I’m still starting every email with “I hope you’re well…ish…I mean obviously I hope you’re extremely well but I recognize that’s fairly unlikely at the moment ahahah,” it’s nice to be reminded that there are still low-stakes disputes Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

That Gatsby prequel hits shelves today, and the reviews are . . . mixed.

A mere four (4) days after F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Great American Novel contender hit the public domain, we have our very first (published) take: a prequel, by Michael Farris Smith, author of Blackwood. We first heard about Nick back in the hazy Read more >

By Emily Temple

This is a list for everyone who said their resolution was to read more.

New year, new books! Reader, I hope you had a restful holiday season. I hope this list finds you recharged and ready to read all that 2021 has to offer. So far, we’re starting off strong with this group of Read more >

By Katie Yee

George Saunders thinks you should get off social media.

It’s only four days into 2021 and the Internet has united around its hatred of a guy named “Bean Dad.” If you feel your brain being battered and smoothed by the tide of social media (like me) and are thinking Read more >

By Walker Caplan

Everything published in "the greatest year for books ever" is now in the public domain.

As of January 1, 2021, a new group of copyrighted works—not only literature, of course, but film and music too—have entered the public domain in the US. This is the class of 1925, which Jane Ciabattari, writing for the BBC, Read more >

By Emily Temple

Barry Lopez, whose landmark writings bore witness to the natural world, has died at 75.

Barry Lopez, whose writings offered a deep understanding and nuanced exploration of the natural world and human beings’ relationship to it, has died at the age of 75. Over the course of half a century, Lopez’s work transformed the field Read more >

By Corinne Segal

For those of us eating alone this holiday season, six books featuring memorable family gatherings.

This holiday season is bittersweet for many: it’s been a year of grief, and many of us are forgoing holiday traditions and creating new ones in isolation. For those of us who can’t be with our families this season for Read more >

By Walker Caplan

Barry Lopez has won the inaugural $20,000 Writer in the World Prize.

Today, the Sun Valley Writers’ Conference (SVWC) announced that American author, essayist, and fiction writer Barry Lopez has been awarded its inaugural Writer in the World Prize, which recognizes and honors a writer whose work expresses a “rare combination of literary Read more >

By Rasheeda Saka