The Hub

News, Notes, Talk

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

8 brand new books you should pick up 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

Here are the bookies' odds for the 2019 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Literary gambling enthusiasts of the world, rejoice! Your chances of guessing the winner of the most prestigious prize in letters have, for one year only, doubled. Yes, as we all know by now, because of the Swedish Academy’s decision earlier Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

Who's going to take home Canada's biggest cash prize for literature?

The shortlist for the 2019 Scotiabank Giller Prize was just announced. For the past 26 years, the Giller Prize has been celebrating Canadian fiction writers. They award the largest purse for literature in the country, a whopping $25,000 cash prize! Read more >

By Katie Yee

15 years after Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke is back.

Yes, folks, it’s true: a full 15 years after Susanna Clarke’s beloved 1,000-page, best-selling debut, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, (set in an alternative 19th century England in which magic exists (again)), she’s announced her second novel: Piranesi, which will be Read more >

By Emily Temple

“There’s going to be a WeWork ‘The Book’”!? our office shrieked in shock and dismay.

Obviously there is. Noted international landlord and Saudi money-launderer WeWork—as tumultuously run and absurd a company as ever companied—is going to get the full investigative book treatment, according to Axios. Wall Street Journal reporters Eliot Brown and Maureen Farrell will Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

David Mitchell, Yaa Gyasi, and Guillermo del Toro: 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

A new guide from PEN America provides some answers on campus "free speech" controversies.

PEN America has released a Campus Free Speech Guide aimed at helping students and educators navigate free speech-related conflicts and controversies on campus. The guide was in part a response to requests from educators who were eager for clear guidance, PEN America Read more >

By Corinne Segal

Here are the seven shortlisted debut novels for the 2019 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize.

Lit Hub is excited to announce the shortlist for the 2019 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. This year’s judging panel included Tommy Orange, Emma Straub, Monique Truong, Maaza Mengiste, and Claire Messud. They are: De’Shawn Charles Winslow, In West Read more >

By Literary Hub

Oh yes, Fleabag's Hot Priest is your new Tom Ripley.

According to Variety, Andrew Scott, better known as “the hot priest” (though I still think of him as the Best Moriarty), has signed on to play the lead in a new Showtime series based on Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley novels. Ripley will Read more >

By Emily Temple

David Mitchell just announced his first novel in five years.

Today, Cloud Atlas author David Mitchell announced his next project: Utopia Avenue, which will be first full-length novel since 2014’s The Bone Clocks. (I suppose he has some time now that he’s done writing The Matrix 4.) Mitchell said in Read more >

By Emily Temple

The eldest Kardashian would like you to know that she can, in fact, read.

Heads up: “You didn’t read that” is the new “You didn’t eat that,” because food and books are both good and life-sustaining things that look nice in Instagram pictures. Or something. Kourtney Kardashian posted a picture of herself reading Emma Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

Area man attempts to sell self-published book to 50 bookstores in 50 days, learns lesson along the way.

As reported in The Republic, Columbus, Ohio’s Mason Engel had already tried to get his self-published reboot of Orwell’s dystopian classic, 1984, into the hands of New York literary agents—like, right into their actual hands. After reaching number one in Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

Here are the seven writers who just won MacArthur "genius" grants.

Today, the MacArthur Foundation announced its 2019 MacArthur Fellows—though you probably know these as “genius grants.” This year’s class of 26 includes 7 writers, including Ocean Vuong, who is just 30 years old. Each Fellow, who has “been chosen for Read more >

By Emily Temple

Guillermo del Toro is publishing a short story collection.

Academy Award-winning director Guillermo del Toro—perhaps you recall Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) or The Shape of Water (2017)—has written a short story collection, and sold it to Amazon Original Stories. According to a press release from Amazon Publishing, the collection, slated Read more >

By Emily Temple

10 brand new books you should pick up 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

Oprah's latest book club pick is Ta-Nehisi Coates' The Water Dancer.

The Third Age of Oprah’s Book Club began in earnest this morning as the beloved former talk show host and literary tastemaker revealed her first new selection in almost a year: Ta-Nihisi Coates’ debut novel, The Water Dancer. Making the announcement Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

Hundreds of authors signed an open letter supporting Kamila Shamsie.

After last week’s decision by the Nelly Sachs Prize jury to rescind the award they had initially offered to novelist Kamila Shamsie, the London Review of Books has today published a response from other members of the literary world. More Read more >

By Aaron Robertson