On Friday, Rebecca Makkai tweeted a 1918 advertisement that suggested readers could “escape the flu by spending the evenings in your own home” with a phonograph. (Turns out social distancing to prevent illness isn’t exactly a new idea.) Interested, I Read more >
Today, the Cleveland Foundation announced the winners of the 2020 Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards, the “only national juried prize for literature that confronts racism and explores diversity.” For the past 85 years, these awards have been vital in celebrating the voices Read more >
It’s no secret to LitHub that librarians are heroes, but a Columbia University Libraries technologist is proving this yet again, in face of the supply shortages facing the New York City hospital workers on the front lines of the COVID-19 Read more >
Yes, I’m talking about Bob Dylan. Because Bob Dylan knows you’re bored. Or at least he thinks you’re bored enough to listen him tell you about the JFK assassination for 17 minutes. And he wants to help. Today, Dylan released Read more >
Ludwig Bemelmans, the author and illustrator of the Madeline books and an artist whose paintings often appeared on covers of The New Yorker (as well as on the walls of the Carlyle Hotel), did not begin a career in the Read more >
Paul Goma, a Romanian author and vocal critic of the Socialist Republic of Romania throughout the 1970s and ’80s, died in Paris earlier this week at 84 as a result of complications caused by coronavirus, according to Goma’s biographer. He Read more >
A children’s librarian from a Pittsburgh suburb has created a new Harry Potter-themed diversion for kids stuck at home: an online escape room. At the start of the game, players have just been assigned to their houses at Hogwarts and Read more >
The celebrity response to coronavirus has been a real mixed bag—lots of house tours, plenty of unsolicited songs, a soupçon of dangerous misinformation—but we’ve also seen some genuinely delightful cultural contributions. For instance, noted Shakespearean Sir Patrick Stewart’s pledge to Read more >
If you’re disappointed about Opening Day, I highly recommend (re)watching Field of Dreams. James Earl Jones as a delightfully grumpy recluse is very relatable right now. Also, Kevin Costner is a hoot. What does this have to do with books? you Read more >
The Whiting Foundation has been doing the vital work of supporting emerging writers for the past 35 years. Annually, The Whiting Awards grants $50,000 each to ten emerging fiction and nonfiction writers, poets, and playwrights. These grants have identified and Read more >
BBC Arts has announced a new line-up of shows for “Culture in Quarantine, a virtual festival of the arts rooted in the experience of national lockdown,” which include a virtual book festival, guided museum tours, Shakespeare performances, and of course, Read more >
Now that I’m more or less confined to my apartment in Brooklyn, I’m more drawn than ever to books and movies about New York—watching them feels like a small way to keep engaging in life here when it feels like Read more >
We’ve already brought your attention to the ways you can help bookstores (and bookstore workers) during the coronavirus pandemic, and here’s another one: a collective of recently laid-off booksellers has started an online storefront at Bookshop.org (in case you missed Read more >
Playwright Terrence McNally, four-time Tony Award winner, Emmy winner, and recipient of the 2019 Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre, died today at the age of 81 “from complications related to the coronavirus,” according to his publicist. McNally Read more >
Look, we’re all a little tense right now—torn between an overwhelming urge to panic and a Marie Kondo-like desire to transform our cells apartments into individualized oases of calm. It’s only natural that in our dread-sodden solitude we become susceptible to extreme Read more >
In this time of canceled events, closed bookstores, and ambient anxiety, Beowulf Sheehan, noted literary photographer and the eye behind many of your favorite portraits of writers, has started a new project to highlight authors and their work. Sheehan writes: With Read more >
N.K. Jemisin’s novel The City We Became is available now. The apartment building is only a few blocks from Inwood Hill Park. The park is gigantic, Manny remembers seeing on a map somewhere. (He seems to have no trouble remembering general facts, Read more >
Supporting your favorite small, independent bookstore during this strange stretch is important, but what’s more important: stopping the spread of COVID-19. So, dear reader, please stay home, get excited for these brand-new books, and buy a gift card from your Read more >
The coronavirus pandemic has hit independent bookstores hard, with booksellers and other book workers now in need of emergency support. Here are some opportunities we’ve spotted to help out, but please let us know of any others and will add Read more >
Big congratulations to novelist Ruchika Tomar, author of A Prayer For Travelers and winner of the $25,000 PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel! This year’s judges were R.O. Kwon, Terese Marie Mailhot, and David L. Ulin. Of their choice, they said: Tomar Read more >
