The Hub

News, Notes, Talk

Edwidge Danticat takes home the $100,000 Vilcek Prize in Literature.

Congratulations to author and activist Edwidge Danticat, winner of this year’s Vilcek Prize in Literature! The Vilcek Foundation Prizes are awarded annually to immigrants who have significantly impacted American culture and society. In 2020, the Vilcek Foundation is awarding prizes Read more >

By Katie Yee

Pamela Anderson loves announcing major life decisions with poetry.

Twelve days after The Hollywood Reporter announced that Pamela Anderson had secretly married producer (and self-proclaimed “Trump of Hollywood”) Jon Peters, they further announced that the two have called the whole thing off. If you’re wondering why this is literary news, have Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

Literary agents representing resistance superhero “Anonymous” go on record refuting scurrilous rumors.

The Katniss Everdeen of our generation—aka the anonymous Trump administration official who wrote a high-fructose op-ed and bestselling book about… silently and ineffectually resisting?—is the subject of Beltway rumors, as some are suggesting that “Anonymous” is, in fact, a high-ranking Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

Dave Matthews is writing a middle grade fantasy novel.

90s dorm room mood-setter Dave Matthews is teaming up with acclaimed children’s author Clete Barrett Smith to write a middle grade fantasy novel, reports EW today: “Titled If We Were Giants, the book follows a young girl who must confront Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

Brideshead Revisited.">

Brideshead Revisited.">Evelyn Waugh's granddaughter is publishing a "crime comedy" spinoff of Brideshead Revisited.

Daisy Waugh, the granddaughter of noted snob and novelist Evelyn Waugh, is apparently writing a “modern-day spin-off” of his famous and brilliant 1945 novel Brideshead Revisited. Waugh the younger has worked as a journalist and has published novels pseudonymously, but Brideshead Revisited.">Read more >

By Emily Temple

Jerry Seinfeld's first book since the '90s will show how his jokes have evolved.

For the better part of the last decade, outside of Seinfeld reruns we’ve mostly seen Jerry Seinfeld resting peaceably on his laurels with his ongoing web series, Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. The series, which is exactly what it sounds like, has produced Read more >

By Aaron Robertson

Here's the first trailer for The Plot Against America.

Good news for fans of Philip Roth, The Wire, and unnervingly timely media: HBO has dropped the first trailer for David Simon’s miniseries adaptation of The Plot Against America. Roth’s novel is an alternate history of America in which aviation Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

The Academy of American Poets has received $4.5 million to keep its poet laureate program going.

One of the best job titles in America will continue to survive thanks to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, which is awarding $4.5 million to the Academy of American Poets to continue supporting poets laureate in states and cities across Read more >

By Corinne Segal

A writer is holding Patrick deWitt's website hostage—until he reads their manuscript.

The following post has been updated with a response from the website squatter. There are traditional ways to get a book published—pitches, queries, agents, enduring months and years of soul-crushing work and silence—and then there’s blackmail. A writer is currently Read more >

By Benjamin Samuel

Attention: we are getting TWO new Katherine Dunn books.

As Publishers Marketplace reports, MCD/FSG will be publishing not one but two new books from the late Katherine Dunn, author of the transcendently good Geek Love. In the first, Toad, “a woman who has retreated into a life of isolation Read more >

By Emily Temple

The publishing industry is probably even less diverse than you thought.

Children’s book publisher Lee & Low Books, a minority-owned company that focuses on multicultural literature, recently released the results of a survey geared towards finding out one thing: What do the numbers say about the widely perceived lack of diversity Read more >

By Aaron Robertson

What is the point of this terrible book review?

With the exception of this brief excerpt, I haven’t read any of Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times, the debut work of cultural criticism by Assistant Professor in Sociology at McMaster University, Phillipa K. Chong. It might be Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

The real Literary Twitter drama this week was about . . . fonts.

Yesterday Twitter proved that I am not, in fact, alone in my font neuroticism. After author Séan Richardson posted this on Twitter… Please reveal the deepest part of yourself: Which font and which size do you write in? — Séan Read more >

By Aaron Robertson

Actual cancel culture: White House threatens John Bolton about impending book.

Because they have nothing to hide about anything, the White House has issued some kind of threat—according to CNN’s Jake Tapper—in a formal letter to former National Security Adviser John Bolton, whose forthcoming memoir from Simon & Schuster contains first-hand Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

Don't worry—Jared Kushner says he's read 25 books on the Israel-Palestine conflict.

We hope it goes without saying that here at Lit Hub, we! Love! Books! They are the most precious and sacred objects. Turning down the page of one to make your place is tantamount to breaking your best friend’s finger Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

Here are your 2020 PEN America literary awards finalists.

Today, PEN America announced their 2020 PEN America Literary Awards Finalists. The awards will dole out 330,000 to writers and translators for exceptional works published in 2019. The winners will be announced live on March 2, at the 2020 PEN Read more >

By Emily Temple

For fans of Younger: the most confusing sequel announcement ever.

The author of Younger—the novel on which the wildly popular TV show starring Sutton Foster and Hilary Duff is based—has just sold a new novel, Older. Pamela Redmond’s Younger tells the story of a woman who, after leaving her job in Read more >

By Katie Yee

Paulo Coelho deletes draft of children’s book he was working on with Kobe Bryant.

This is a sad and simple human gesture in the face of death. Within hours of learning Kobe Bryant had died in a helicopter crash, novelist Paulo Coelho—most famous in the US for his 1988 novel The Alchemist—deleted the draft Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

Here are the 10 new books to look out for this week.

Every week, the TBR pile grows a little bit more. It’s getting precarious. It’s taking up your whole nightstand. It’s threatening to crush you in your sleep. Well, what are you waiting for? Get cracking. What are you reading this Read more >

By Katie Yee

Margaret Atwood's first poetry collection in over a decade will be published this year.

If you love Margaret Atwood but don’t feel like immersing yourself in a too-close-to-home dystopia at the moment, good news! Dearly, Atwood’s first poetry collection in more than a decade, will be published by Ecco November 10, 2020. What better way Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor