The Hub

News, Notes, Talk

RWA's entire board resigns, just in time for Valentine's Day.

Happy Valentine’s Day! The whole board of the Romance Writers of America has resigned. Treasurer Nan Dixon, along with directors-at-large Hanna Rhys Barnes, Kate McMurray, Maria Powers, Mellanie Szereto, and Eliana West, announced they would leave their positions in a Read more >

By Corinne Segal

NFL-quality quarterback Colin Kaepernick is starting his own publishing company.

Notably blacklisted NFL-quality quarterback Colin Kaepernick is starting his own publishing company. The New York Times is reporting that the 32-year-old NFL-quality quarterback is also writing his own memoir, which will be released by Kaepernick Publishing, and will, according to his Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

Dev Patel is a smoldering Sir Gawain in this slick adaptation of the 14th century poem.

Did you know that Dev Patel is not only appearing on film as David Copperfield this year, but also as the reckless and adorable Sir Gawain? Because I did not. But today, A24 released the first teaser trailer for David Read more >

By Emily Temple

A happy thing on the mid-week internet: Kids celebrating Hair Love.

After this week’s Oscar win for Karen Rupert Toliver and Matthew A. Cherry’s animated short “Hair Love,” the story of a young black father trying to style his daughter’s natural hair, kids are turning back to the book that the film Read more >

By Corinne Segal

Here is a 3,252-track playlist from DJ Haruki Murakami's vinyl collection.

Haruki Murakami is a man of many interests—writing, ultramarathons, solitude, talking cats, and of course, music. Not only is Murakami a noted one-night DJ, he also founded a jazz club when he was 15, and has a collection of more Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

Olivia Colman will star in Maggie Gyllenhaal's adaptation of Ferrante's The Lost Daughter.

Just when you thought Ferrante fever—which spread through literary Europe in the early 2000s before moving stateside in a Europa Editions book crate and consuming the New World—was under control, here comes Maggie Gyllenhaal to foster another devastating outbreak. For Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

Scientific proof that the book is almost always better than the movie.

My dad used to say that most movies are better than most books, and a bad movie is better (or at least easier to sit through) than a bad book, but with the very best books, no movie could even Read more >

By Emily Temple

Dozens of authors are protesting sudden leadership cuts at Wayne State University Press.

After three managers at Wayne State University Press, including its editor-in-chief, were fired without much explanation on Friday, nearly 60 authors who have worked with the publisher wrote an open letter calling for their reinstatement. Wayne State University Press has been Read more >

By Aaron Robertson

This database of old book illustrations is the Good Internet.

So many internet rabbit holes are exercises in impotent rage and/or envy, so it’s a real delight to come upon a method of wasting many hours that’s actually good (or at the very least true neutral). So next time you find yourself Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

Here's the cover for Elena Ferrante's next novel.

Today, EW revealed the cover of Elena Ferrante’s next novel, The Lying Life of Adults, which will be published in the US on June 9th by Europa. Designer Emanuele Ragnisco described it as “a close collaboration between the author, the publisher, Read more >

By Emily Temple

In case you missed it, here's Margaret Atwood on an electric scooter.

Beloved literary titan Margaret Atwood is currently in New Zealand to promote the release of The Testaments, her Booker Prize-winning sequel to the 1985 dystopian classic The Handmaid’s Tale. However, if you think Atwood is the kind of author who confines Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

Again, a proposed federal budget would stop funding libraries, and again, it probably won't happen.

For the fourth time, President Trump’s proposed 2021 budget would eliminate all federal funding for libraries, a move that Congress has rejected in the past and that is unlikely to succeed this time around—even as leaders in the humanities caution Read more >

By Corinne Segal

I found the most boring headline on the Internet.

And here it is: Canadian Book-Buying Habits Haven’t Changed Much in the Last Year. In case you’re still reading, for some reason Forbes is reporting that Canadians (my people) aren’t taking to audiobooks in quite the same way their cousins Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

10 new books we're excited about 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

It's just a really good day on the queer book internet!

There was life before we saw Janelle Monáe in high-waisted tuxedo pants singing with Billy Porter in a gold cape, and it was a worse one. This morning—in the dawn of a new week and a world in which we Read more >

By Corinne Segal

A writer is honoring the lives of the women murdered by Jack the Ripper with a mural.

When tourism meets true crime, the results are bound to make you queasy, and the Whitechapel district of London, with its ghoulish Jack the Ripper tours, is no exception. Hallie Rubenhold, author of The Five: The Untold Lives of the Read more >

By Molly Odintz

How not to separate your church from your state: Tennessee seeks to make Bible “state book.”

Reporting on all the crazy fucking things that Republican state governments attempt to pass off as “law” can be truly dispiriting, but here we are: two Tennessee reps have introduced a bill that would make the Christian Bible the official Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

Pedro Almodóvar is adapting Lucia Berlin’s A Manual For Cleaning Women and I am nervous.

When I heard that Pedro Almodóvar was adapting A Manual For Cleaning Women, by Lucia Berlin, I yelled holy shit in my empty apartment, freaking out my cat and likely spooking the downstairs neighbor. Look, I love Almodóvar (Women on Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

A new law aimed at the gig economy is affecting writers. Lawmakers are trying to change it.

California runs on tech-driven gig labor, and its creepy, dehumanizing effects are everywhere, from lawsuits over working conditions at ride-share companies and horror stories about an algorithm-based work system to the literary lens of writers whose recent books have set Read more >

By Corinne Segal

Stephen Colbert thinks The Hobbit is only okay.

Stephen Colbert’s Tolkien fandom is well-established, but on last night’s Late Night, the host revealed that while he loves the Lord of the Rings trilogy, he thinks The Hobbit is a baby book for babies. Colbert showed a clip of his guest, Patton Oswalt, finishing Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor