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News, Notes, Talk

This is the weird horror novel that outsold Dracula in 1897.

Bram Stoker’s Dracula has remained in print since it was first published in April 1897. A bestseller in its day, it has gone on to spawn countless derivatives and become one of the most indelible pop-cultural touchstones in recent history. Read more >

By Olivia Rutigliano

The only thing better than books is bookstore t-shirts that support booksellers.

It’s not a particularly hopeful time for literally anyone right now (unless maybe you’re getting a $1.7 million tax break?) but that doesn’t mean we should stop trying to help people whenever we can. I’m getting pretty tired of washing Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

Important lessons from Edith Wharton's interior decoration manual.

I only recently learned that the first book Edith Wharton ever published was an interior design manual called The Decoration of Houses, with Ogden Codman Jr., the architect who designed her Newport home. I also just moved, so I was Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

And the winner of the $35,000 Aspen Words Literary Prize is...

The Aspen Institute has just announced the winner of their 2020 Literary Prize: Christy Lefteri, for her novel, The Beekeeper of Aleppo, which tells the story of Syrian refugees in Great Britain. The Aspen Words Literary Prize was established to celebrate Read more >

By Katie Yee

Maybe we can all be sourdough librarians in a post-pandemic world.

Putting roughly half a million Brooklyn home cooks to shame, a sourdough library in Belgium has placed 125 sourdough starters from around the world on display in a space that offers virtual tours. The Puratos Sourdough Library in St. Vith, Read more >

By Corinne Segal

Chilean writer Luis Sepúlveda has died of coronavirus at 70.

After a six-week battle with coronavirus, the Chilean author Luis Sepúlveda has died at the age of 70. The government of Asturias, where he was living in Spain, confirmed his death today. The author had been hospitalized in late February Read more >

By Aaron Robertson

Meet the artist behind your new favorite literary Instagram account.

These days, everything feels a little bit bleaker than usual. But one thing that genuinely made me smile as I was panic scrolling last week? The clever designs of Read Books, Serve Looks, otherwise known as Thom Stead (Instagram bio: Read more >

By Emily Temple

Middlesex is finally being adapted for TV.

It’s been nearly twenty years since Jeffrey Eugenides’ Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Middlesex (a multi-generational coming-of-age epic focusing on the travails of an intersex protagonist in 1960s Detroit) first hit shelves, and its legions of fans (the book has shifted upwards Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

Christina Rossetti once wrote a poem calling out a suitor who would not take no for an answer.

In the late 1850s, the Pre-Raphaelite poet Christina Rossetti wrote a poem about her annoyance with a suitor who couldn’t seem to comprehend the fact that she didn’t want to marry him—despite her telling him so quite plainly. In a Read more >

By Olivia Rutigliano

Watch the first trailer for the new TV adaptation of Brave New World.

Yesterday, as part of NBC’s limited rollout of its new screening service Peacock, they released a few teasers for their original content—including this teaser trailer for their adaptation of Aldous Huxley’s 1932 classic Brave New World, which will be debuting Read more >

By Emily Temple

Remember when Doris Lessing absolutely did not care that she won the Nobel Prize?

On this day in 1962, Doris Lessing published The Golden Notebook, arguably her most famous work, in part because of how diligently college-age men still name-drop it to try to endear themselves to hot feminists. (Hi, we see what you’re Read more >

By Emily Temple

Gather round, children, for storytime with Tom Hardy and his french bulldog.

The BBC’s children’s channel CBeebies has had tremendous success over the past decade with its Bedtime Stories program—a ten-minute slot, airing every weeknight from 6:50 to 7, wherein a celebrity reads a children’s story to an audience of rapt rugrats across Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

Here are the books New Yorkers are borrowing from the library while sheltering in place.

The New York Public Library’s list of what books New Yorkers are reading as they social distance shows a taste for dystopia, other people’s problems, and Michelle Obama—so, you know, the usual. As library locations remain closed, the NYPL has Read more >

By Corinne Segal

So you're telling me I could be quaranting on Shel Silverstein's houseboat?

If you’re looking to add a little mobility and a lot of whimsy to your home life (or as we call it, life), and you have $783,000, you’re in luck! Shel Silverstein’s houseboat, currently floating in Richardson Bay in Sausalito, California, is Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

Abdelouahab Aissaoui has won the International Prize for Arabic Fiction.

A novel set at the beginning of France’s long conquest of Algeria has won the 13th International Prize for Arabic Fiction. Algerian writer Abdelouahab Aissaoui is the first from his country to win the prize, which comes with a $50,000 Read more >

By Aaron Robertson

The winner of the $50,000 Stella Prize spotlights the horrors of domestic abuse.

Last night, journalist Jess Hill was named the winner of the $50,000 Stella Prize, which celebrates excellence in Australian women’s writing. (The shortlisted authors, who will each receive $2,000, are: Charlotte Wood for her novel, The Weekend; Tara June Winch Read more >

By Katie Yee

Join us for a Virtual FSG Poetry Reading on Wednesday night!

Please tune in tomorrow night, Wednesday the 15th, at 7pm for a special FSG poetry reading at Lit Hub’s Virtual Book Channel. Host Hannah Aizenman, poetry coordinator at The New Yorker, will be joined by three poets, Eliza Griswold, Shane McCrae, Read more >

By Julia Hass

All your favorite pop songs reimagined as sonnets.

Today from the endless vault that is the internet: your favorite pop songs, rewritten as sonnets. I only recently stumbled across this truly hilarious and inspired (and now-defunct) Tumblr, but it made me laugh out loud in an otherwise depressing Read more >

By Emily Temple

Here are 10 new books to keep you company this week.

My second favorite quarantine activity has become refreshing the bookshop.org page to see how much they’ve raised for local bookstores. (At the time that I’m writing this, they’ve crossed over the half a million line!) My first favorite quarantine activity Read more >

By Katie Yee

'Literary Bookstores, Can They Survive?' And other cover lines from 50 years of Poets & Writers.

Poets & Writers is celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2020. The organization began in 1970 with a program—which continues to this day—that pays writers fees for giving readings and leading writing workshops in community-based settings. In 1973 Poets & Writers Read more >

By Literary Hub