Country music legend and goddamn national treasure Dolly Parton (who also happens to be a true fairy godmother of American literacy) is going to be reading to us all starting this Thursday, April 2. As you can see below, the Read more >
Tomie dePaola, celebrated author and illustrator who delighted millions of children with his warm and witty books, died on Monday in Lebanon, New Hampshire, from complications after surgery for a fall he had suffered last week. He was 85. The Read more >
Nothing calms the nerves in anxious times like an eerie, upper-class English voice speaking to you from beyond the grave. Submitted for your approval, then, is this rare recording of Virginia Woolf. Taken from an April 1937 BBC Radio broadcast Read more >
The Republic of Consciousness Prize for Small Presses celebrates the best fiction published by presses with fewer than five full-time employees every year. The 2020 winner is Fitzcarraldo Editions, a small publisher based in South-East London that also published Olga Read more >
Powell’s in Portland—one of the largest independent bookstores in the country—announced via Facebook on Friday that because of the surge in online book orders “we now have over 100 folks working at Powell’s again—all full time with benefits.” This is Read more >
Here’s the thing about chatting with large groups of friends on Zoom: it bears very little relation to how large group hang-outs usually happen. No judgment if you and all your friends sit in a circle and take turns speaking Read more >
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 >
