The Hub

News, Notes, Talk

Check out these messy, startling portraits of some of your favorite dead authors.

If you happen to be out near Pasadena, California, you may want to look in at Gallery 30 South, which is putting on a wonderful (socially distant!) art exhibit until the end of the month: Zach Mendosa’s Literary features some remarkable paintings Read more >

By Aaron Robertson

Here's the shortlist for the £10,000 Caine Prize.

For the past 20 years, the AKO Caine Prize for African Writing has encouraged and spotlighted the diversity and power of African writing. Every year, the prize goes to an African writer of a short story published in English. (Why Read more >

By Katie Yee

Victorians were obsessed with the rumor that George Eliot had two different-sized hands.

The Victorian writer George Eliot, whose true name was Mary Ann Evans, was the subject of much gossip during her lifetime, as well as after her death. She, the daughter of a land agent who rose to literary prominence in Read more >

By Olivia Rutigliano

Never forget that Sarah Bernhardt cast herself as Hamlet (at the theater she named for herself).

Sarah Bernhardt was an actress in a category of her own. Mark Twain (quoted in the program for Bernhardt’s 1912-1913 American tour) famously said “There are five kinds of actresses: bad actresses, fair actresses, good actresses, great actresses, and Sarah Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

Exclusive cover reveal: Te-Ping Chen's Land of Big Numbers.

You may already know Te-Ping Chen from her short story “Lulu,” which was published in The New Yorker last year. Now, Chen’s debut collection, Land of Big Numbers, which is coming from HMH in February 2021, has a gorgeous cover, Read more >

By Emily Temple

One of Oscar Wilde's last stops in England before exile was a bookstore.

On May 18th, 1897, one day before Oscar Wilde would finish a two-year prison sentence for “gross indecency” with men, the author took a cab with two warders from Reading Gaol to wait for a London-bound train. Were it up Read more >

By Aaron Robertson

Confirmed: Audiobooks are the brightest place in publishing right now.

Remember March? You know, a million years ago? During the month in which most places in the US began to shut down and enforce social distancing, book sales, unsurprisingly, suffered, with one notable exception: audiobooks. The Association of American Publishers Read more >

By Corinne Segal

56 years ago, a dying Lorraine Hansberry coined the phrase "young, gifted and black."

To be young, gifted, and black Oh, what a lovely, precious dream To be young, gifted, and black Open your heart to what I mean –Nina Simone, “To Be Young, Gifted, and Black,” after Lorraine Hansberry Lorraine Hansberry—the iconic playwright Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

The Magnetic Fields have a new album and it's inspired by the microfictions of Lydia Davis?

Stephin Merrit (the primary lyricist of the on again/off again Magnetic Fields) is essentially a master of microfictions, so it’s no surprise that the band’s new album, Quickies, is inspired by the stories of Lydia Davis (who is, in fact, Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

On the horribly awkward night James Joyce met Marcel Proust. (I still crave literary parties.)

The temptation to start hanging out with real live people is strong. Despite being the epicenter of the worst global pandemic in a century even New York state is starting to reopen. I’m not going to get into the terrifying Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

The NYPL has announced the 2020 Young Lions Fiction Award Finalists.

For the past 20 years, the New York Public Library has been celebrating the work of young writers with the Young Lions Fiction Award, which is given annually to an American writer age 35 and younger. Past winners include Amelia Read more >

By Katie Yee

20 new books to look forward to this week.

On Wednesdays we wear pink, but on Tuesdays we celebrate the new books that are coming into the world. We also order them from our local independent bookstores or on bookshop.org. * Curtis Sittenfeld, Rodham  (Random House) “Rodham is a nauseating, Read more >

By Katie Yee

Your Week in Virtual Book Events, May 18 to 24

Virtual Author Series: Emma Straub and Judy Blume Monday, May 18, 7pm EDT Books & Books and the Miami Book Fair present Emma Straub and Judy Blume in celebration of Straub’s new novel All Adults Here. The authors and booksellers Read more >

By Penina Roth

Let's drool over this Japanese house with a public library on the ground floor.

We talk a big game about how much we love public libraries, but it turns out there exists a tier of library love that we had never previous considered: converting half of your house to a beautiful, minimalist public(!) library. Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

Here's Katherine Anne Porter describing how she resisted death during the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic.

“I resisted. I would not die. I could not.” Katherine Anne Porter—the Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-winning author of Ship of Fools and Pale Horse, Pale Rider—was born 130 years ago today in Indian Creek, Texas, and should, by Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

Oh my (demi)god: Percy Jackson is going to be a TV show.

Most of my friends were very disappointed when, on their eleventh birthdays, they received no letter from Hogwarts. Me? I was always more of a Lightning Thief kind of girl. (Don’t @ me!) To all my fellow Percy Jackson fans who Read more >

By Katie Yee

On the origin of the word “blurb.”

In the literary world, blurbs are a fraught business. These days they’re an industry standard, and writers and publishers need them to promote their books, but they are, above all else, a favor economy, and lots of people sort of Read more >

By Emily Temple

Bryan Washington has won the £30,000 Dylan Thomas Prize.

Bryan Washington, one of this year’s 5 Under 35 honorees and rising literary star of Houston, was just awarded the Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize for his debut short story collection, Lot. The Dylan Thomas Prize, now in its fifteenth Read more >

By Katie Yee

A journal Jim Morrison wrote in Paris will soon be up for auction.

Those among us with a cool $100,000 to spare will soon have a new opportunity to safeguard a piece of rock and roll history. Jim Morrison’s Paris Journal, containing reflections and poems that the singer wrote in Paris just before Read more >

By Corinne Segal

This AI-generated dictionary is very cool and also terrifying.

Disclaimer: I find most things related to machine learning terrifying if I think about them for longer then a few seconds, both because at this point in my life, my STEM knowledge ends with PEMDAS, and because I have enough Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor