The Hub

News, Notes, Talk

Complete your pandemic aesthetic with this bookcase that converts into a coffin.

Yes. It’s a set of bookshelves that can convert into a coffin. And yes, it’s real. Sure, it sounds like some kind of morbid gag (that we’re all quite enjoying here in the virtual Lit Hub offices, aka Slack), but Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

Better titles for ex-Trump staffers' memoirs.

Another day, another announcement of a memoir from a former Trump collaborator. This time, it’s Fiona Hill, an ex-advisor who testified in Trump’s impeachment inquiry, whose “views about the future of a polarized America” will be published by Houghton Mifflin Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

Could this West Coast production of The Waste Land be a model for mid-pandemic theater?

In early March, on one of the last nights before everything stopped, I went to see Medea at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. It was one of the final nights the show was in production, and the 834-seat theater was Read more >

By Corinne Segal

Is this the first time ever a parent and child are up for the same literary prize?

The good news is that there’s a very strong chance someone in the Sweeney family walks away with £2,000 as winner of the 2020 Butler Literary Award, which goes to “the best first publication by an Irish writer in any Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

We at Literary Hub hereby approve of Oprah's newest book club pick.

Phew. I know, you were all waiting on us, right? Especially you, Oprah. Oprah definitely cares what we think. Well, good news everybody: the official position of Literary Hub is that Oprah’s latest book club pick, Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste, is a Read more >

By Emily Temple

Remember when Toni Morrison smacked down a racist biography of Angela Davis?

It happened in the fall of 1972. The Watergate scandal was in its infancy, Bobby Fischer had just defeated Boris Spassky in a Cold War chess match, and the inspirational political activist, philosopher, academic, and author Angela Davis had recently Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

Ryan Reynolds is making a movie based on a "Shouts & Murmurs" essay by Simon Rich.

Have you ever come to the end of another agreeably humorous “Shouts & Murmurs” column, risen from your porcelain throne, tossed the New Yorker issue back into the stack, flushed (perhaps not in this order…), and thought to yourself I wonder Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

Breaking: Sean Hannity, quoter of Latin, does not know any Latin.

As Business Insider reports, Sean Hannity has recently changed the Latin motto on the cover of his new book, Live Free or Die: America (and the World) on the Brink, which he told viewers in March meant “Live free or America Read more >

By Emily Temple

Very good writing advice from New Girl's Nick Miller.

Nick Miller, Nick Miller. By day, he’s a cranky bartender at a failing establishment. By night, he’s the author of Z is for Zombie and, most notably, The Pepperwood Chronicles. He’s hands-down one of the greatest fictional writers of our Read more >

By Katie Yee

Erin Morgenstern on the one book that blew her mind.

Welcome to the Book Marks Questionnaire, where we ask authors questions about the books that have shaped them. This week, we spoke to The Night Circus and The Starless Sea author Erin Morgenstern * Book Marks: What book do you think Read more >

By Book Marks

23 new books to add to your TBR pile today.

I couldn’t even narrow it down to 20 this time. That’s how good this week’s bounty is! We’ve got new books from Akwaeke Emezi, Morgan Jerkins, John Freeman, Karin Slaughter, Jeffrey Toobin, and (what?) Guillermo del Toro. We’ve got exciting Read more >

By Katie Yee

Today in cursed headlines: Serialized fiction app Radish raises $63 million in funding.

Have you ever wished MFA workshops could be more aggressively monetized? There’s an app for that! It’s Radish, a serialized fiction app which publishes material “produced in TV-style writers’ rooms,” and it’s just raised $63 million in Series A funding. Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

Is this the greatest TV commercial ever made for a public library?

Please watch this video of Curbside Larry from the Barbara Bush Public Library in Harris County, Texas as he takes us through a dizzying tour of all the library has to offer you, the fine member of the reading public, Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

Which literary characters would wear masks? (An investigation.)

Which of your favorite literary characters would dutifully mask up, and which ones would act like human plumes? I have some thoughts. Atticus Finch Yeah, and he’s working on a really good metaphor about masks, society, and citizenship. Don’t worry—he’ll Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

Authors for Black Voices is auctioning some seriously cool shit to to raise money for racial justice non-profits.

Authors for Black Voices, a group created by authors Andrea Bartz and Jennifer Keishin Armstrong that describes itself as a collection of “publishing professionals eager to do what we can to combat racism and elevate Black voices,” is holding an Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

A new Stephen King novel is coming this March.

Entertainment Weekly reports today that Stephen King will release a new novel titled Later in March 2021, a time by which, hopefully, we will no longer need quarantine-themed reading lists. The book will feature the story of Jamie Conklin, a Read more >

By Corinne Segal

"Too much exercise!" Read Flaubert's (very harsh) writing advice for Guy de Maupassant.

On this day in 1878, Guy de Maupassant, not quite 28 years old, wrote to his mentor Gustave Flaubert with some complaints. Namely that “fucking women is as monotonous as listening to male wit. I find that the news in Read more >

By Emily Temple

Zimbabwean novelist Tsitsi Dangarembga was arrested during anti-corruption protests.

Days after Tsitsi Dangarembga was longlisted for the prestigious Booker Prize for her novel This Mournable Body, Zimbabwean officials have taken her into custody during protests against government corruption. Agence France-Presse reported that Dangarembga and another protester were “bundled into Read more >

By Corinne Segal

On the value of reading poetry together—and apart—in the current moment.

Right now, many of us are at home, sheltering in place with too much to do. Why then add yet another chore, reading poetry, to an already long list of to-dos? Because joy. Because we need at least one thing Read more >

By Nicole Sealey

Remember when Ali G interviewed Gore Vidal (and Gore Vidal showed superhuman patience)?

Gore Vidal—essayist, historian, novelist, public intellectual, and Norman Mailer antagonist (Mailer headbutted him backstage at the Dick Cavett Show over a piece in the NYRB in which Vidal compared Mailer’s views of women to Charles Manson’s)—died on this day in Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor