The Hub

News, Notes, Talk

Dave Eggers, Lili Reinhart, and Rihanna: the week in book deals.

My personal form of astrology is to anxiously trawl Publishers Marketplace every week. No, wait, hear me out: it’s how I can tell the only future that matters: which books I will be reading a year and a half from now. Also, Read more >

By Emily Temple

Read Olga Tokarczuk's response to winning the Nobel Prize.

Riverhead has released a newly translated statement from Olga Tokarczuk, who won a Nobel Prize in Literature this week. “Olga had been unreachable for most of the day yesterday,” wrote Claire McGinnis, Riverhead’s Associate Director of Publicity, in an email, Read more >

By Emily Temple

EXCLUSIVE COVER REVEAL: Broken People by Sam Lansky.

Sam Lansky, author of the memoir The Gilded Razor and the West Coast Editor at TIME magazine, will publish a novel in June 2020. Here’s the cover!   Lansky’s narrator, Sam, is a writer and recovering addict based in LA in his Read more >

By Literary Hub

Anthony Bourdain's estate auction includes a lot of his early writings.

An auction of various things from the estate of Anthony Bourdain, the late writer, chef, and TV host, is happening now through October 30, and it includes a number of Bourdain’s early writings. The current bid for the original manuscript Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

PEN America expresses "deep regret" over Peter Handke's Nobel Prize.

PEN America issued the following statement today, from author and PEN America President Jennifer Egan, in response to the Swedish Academy’s choice of Peter Handke for the 2019 Nobel Prize in Literature (along with Olga Tokarczuk): PEN America does not Read more >

By Emily Temple

The first ever dual Nobel Prizes in Literature have been awarded to Olga Tokarczuk and Peter Handke

Olga Tokarczuk and Peter Handke have been awarded the 2018 and 2019 Nobel Prizes in Literature, respectively (the prize was not awarded in 2018 after scandal and impropriety rocked the Swedish Academy). Tokarczuk was one of this year’s favorites to Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

Ali Wong almost returned the advance on her book because she thought it was "terrible."

First came Baby Cobra, Ali Wong’s brilliantly brazen Netflix comedy special. She shares with us her sexual escapades with homeless men, pokes fun at feminism (“Lean in? I don’t wanna lean in. I wanna lay down!”), and she does it all while Read more >

By Katie Yee

The 2019 National Book Award Finalists are...

Here are the 25 finalists up for the National Book Awards in of Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Translated Literature, and Young People’s Literature: Finalists for Fiction: Susan Choi, Trust Exercise Henry Holt and Company / Macmillan Publishers Kali Fajardo-Anstine, Sabrina & Read more >

By Literary Hub

The 10 new books you need to read this week.

Every week, a new crop of great new books hit the shelves. If we could read them all, we would, but since time is finite and so is the human capacity for page-turning, here are a few of the ones Read more >

By Emily Temple

Rihanna: the only girl in the world whose memoir comes with a marble pedestal.

If you wanted to see a lot of photos of Rihanna, you could follow @badgalriri on Instagram OR you could buy this 504-page “visual autobiography.” (Think Kim Kardashian’s Selfish but probably way better.) Rihanna is a 15-pound doorstopper that features Read more >

By Katie Yee

Here are the winners of this year's Dayton Literary Peace Prize.

Another week, another prestigious literary prize announcement. This time, it’s the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, which “celebrates the power of literature to promote peace, social justice, and global understanding.” The nonfiction winner was Rising Out of Hatred, by Eli Saslow, a Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

The Booksellers is a fascinating look into the world of rare book dealers.

First editions, signed or inscribed copies, incunabula, manuscripts, and artists’ books . . . the list goes on. Bibliophiles of all stripes are aware of these terms and their monetary value although they may not have a clue who has Read more >

By Joseph Pomp

Jim Carrey, Bill Gates, & Rivers Solomon: the week in book deals.

My personal form of astrology is to anxiously trawl Publishers Marketplace every week. No, wait, hear me out: it’s how I can tell the only future that matters: which books I will be reading a year and a half from now. Also, Read more >

By Emily Temple

Read up on the radical, life-affirming history of LGBTQ bookstores.

Jason Villemez at the Bay Area Reporter reports today on the expansive history of LGBTQ bookstores, tracking their humble beginnings at the cultural outskirts of bookselling, their rise as community hubs during the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and the new roadblocks they’re Read more >

By Corinne Segal

National Enquirer editor threatens to sue booksellers over Ronan Farrow book.

Parodically villainous Dylan Howard, the former editor-in-chief of The National Enquirer and alleged sexual harasser, really, really doesn’t want you to read Ronan Farrow’s upcoming book, Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators. Catch and Kill is Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

Will everyone in Chicago please bring their books back to the library now?

Fellow procrastinators rejoice: Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced earlier this week that the city’s library system would stop charging late fees, making it the largest city in the country to do so. Now, books that have been checked out will Read more >

By Corinne Segal

Here are the winners of this year's $40k Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grants.

Today, the Whiting Foundation announced its 2019 grantees of the Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grants, which aims to “foster original, ambitious projects that bring writing to the highest possible standard.” Each of the eight winners will be awarded $40,000 to support Read more >

By Literary Hub

PSA: Jim Carrey is writing a novel.

An unwitting participant on The Truman Show, a man bestowed with all of Morgan Freeman’s godly powers, the Grinch, and now… novelist? Everyone’s favorite Canadian-American actor is putting on a different Mask and writing a book. Memoirs and Misinformation is going to Read more >

By Katie Yee

Welsh writer Jo Lloyd wins £15,000 BBC National Short Story Award.

The 2019 BBC National Short Story Award, partnered with Cambridge University, has just announced that this year’s winner is Welsh writer Jo Lloyd for the story “The Invisible,” inspired by the life of an 18th-century woman from Carnarvonshire who claimed Read more >

By Eleni Theodoropoulos

Head over to The Believer for their new interactive comic feature by artist Matt Huynh.

More of this, please. The Believer has a brand new interactive comic feature up today by Sydney-born artist Matt Huynh “about growing up in a community of Vietnam War refugees resettled in Australia’s heroin capital.” It’s a beautiful and engaging Read more >

By Jonny Diamond