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News, Notes, Talk

The director of the Philadelphia Free Library resigned over claims of mistreatment of Black staff.

Siobhan Reardon, president and director of the Philadelphia Free Library, has resigned under protracted pressure from local officials and staff over accusations that she created an unwelcome and hostile environment for black employees. “In the last several months, events have Read more >

By Corinne Segal

Elisabeth Moss' latest literary project: an adaptation of Lauren Beukes' The Shining Girls.

Elisabeth Moss has been on a literary adaptation hot-streak of late. In just the past five years, the Emmy-winning breakout star of Mad Men (whom Vulture dubbed the “Queen of Peak TV”) has appeared in The Handmaid’s Tale, The Invisible Man, Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

Mitch McConnell quoted Salman Rushdie in a confused defense of free speech and the rule of law.

In an address on the Senate floor yesterday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell drew on novelist Salman Rushdie to decry the “grievance-industrial complex”—cancel culture—and bemoan what he sees as the erosion of law and order. Meanwhile, in Portland, protestors continued to Read more >

By Aaron Robertson

Seattle’s new hockey team is called the Kraken (which is a literary character?)

Yes, this is hockey news on a website devoted to book culture, but look: I am from Canada and the Kraken is an ancient mythological creature, and mythology is foundational to all of those books you’re carrying in that tote Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

Michael Cohen will be released and allowed to finish his memoir from home confinement.

[Updated 1:18 pm ET] Michael Cohen will be released from prison on Friday under orders from a federal judge, who said he was re-imprisoned after an initial release to home confinement in retaliation for his plans to publish a book Read more >

By Corinne Segal

From Hemingway-inspired fan fiction to pun-filled poems, a new language-generating AI does it all.

Early this year, we ran a story about GPT-2, an AI language program developed by the San Francisco-based research firm OpenAI. While language generation software can have a variety of commercial uses, we were more interested in seeing whether innovations Read more >

By Aaron Robertson

A Hulu series based on Curtis Sittenfeld's Rodham is in the works.

A Hulu series based on Curtis Sittenfeld’s latest novel Rodham is in the works. The novel is an alternate history of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s life in which she dates (and definitely sleeps with) Bill, but ultimately decides not to marry him. Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

YA superstar Jason Reynolds just sold his debut novel for adults.

Today, Simon and Schuster announced that their imprint Scribner will be publishing the debut novel for adults from #1 New York Times bestselling children’s book author Jason Reynolds, whose books include Look Both Ways and Ghost, both finalists for the Read more >

By Emily Temple

How to write about a 4-year-old poet’s book deal without getting sad.

This is definitely a clickbait title because I don’t really know the answer. In contemplating Nadim Shamma-Sourgen’s recently announced book deal with Walker Books (who will publish a collection of his “astonishing” poetry next summer) I have spent the last Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

Victorian fans of Dracula made vampire-slaying kits for fun.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that vampires make for the best entertainment content. They do, they just do, and they always have. In the latest news about humankind’s obsession with vampires, Aimee Ortiz reports in The New York Times that Read more >

By Olivia Rutigliano

The BLM movement is inspiring a boom in diverse children's literature.

Illustration by Bea Jackson. From Skin Like Mine (2016) by Latishia M. Perry   When a friend of mine, a former teacher, told me the subject of a children’s book he wants to write—an allegory about how the criminal justice Read more >

By Aaron Robertson

Irvine Welsh and Bret Easton Ellis are creating a satirical tv show about a tabloid magazine.

Do we really need this right now? Fine. I’ll blog, you decide: according to Deadline, Irvine Welsh and Bret Easton Ellis are developing a series about “American tabloid culture” that will “chronicle a weekly publication across decades, a place where Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

HBO Max assembles a sexy dream team—ft. Idris Elba and Keanu Reeves—to read you bedtime stories.

Remember in the early days of quarantine when celebrities were framing their Instagram attention-seeking as a public service? (Okay, yes, we were as guilty as anyone of writing breathless blogs about stars generously reading books aloud, but in our defense, Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

Jonathan Lethem will publish a novel in serial form over 10 years in this new star-studded lit mag.

Now on the list of beautiful things I’d like to have in my apartment: the new literary magazine INQUE, created by Granta editor Dan Crowe and Matt Willey, formerly the art director at The New York Times Magazine. The magazine will Read more >

By Corinne Segal

15 new books to add to your TBR pile.

The sun is shining, the temperatures are rising, and the books just keep on coming! Here are fifteen of the biggest new titles hitting bookshelves today. * Adrian Tomine, The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist (Drawn & Quarterly) “A hilarious, Read more >

By Katie Yee

Julia Roberts, Denzel Washington cast in adaptation of Rumaan Alam's Leave the World Behind.

Today in adaptation news: Neflix has won the rights to adapt Rumaan Alam’s forthcoming novel Leave the World Behind, with Sam Esmail—of Mr Robot and Homecoming fame—directing, and Julia Roberts and Denzel Washington starring. In the novel, an unspecified global Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

All the books mentioned in Clueless.

Clueless, one of the best literary adaptations of the 90s, has just turned twenty-five. And would Lit Hub miss out on a chance to celebrate it? AS IF. Because of the pandemic, we can’t celebrate by making a cameo at Read more >

By Olivia Rutigliano

Noted immortal Keanu Reeves to bless our lives with a comic book in October.

Noted immortal man, Keanu Reeves, is writing a comic book with the help of bestselling graphic novelist Matt Kindt. Called BRZRKR, the first of 12 issues will debut in October just in time to save the world / distract us Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

A math teacher has painted 45 book rocks to hide in her local library (when it reopens).

Look, these days, I’ll take my cheering wherever I can get it. And this weekend, Ella Dickson put a smile on my face with her thread of book rocks, each one painstakingly painted to look like a novel. They are Read more >

By Emily Temple

It's a good day to rewatch John Lewis accepting the National Book Award.

In case you forgot: in 2016, legendary civil rights leader and Congressman John Lewis won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, along with co-writer Andrew Aydin and artist Nate Powell, for his graphic novel March: Book Three, the Read more >

By Emily Temple