Well, we’re finally here. After months (years?…sigh) of feinting, blustering, saber-rattling, faux outrage, real outrage, grand promises, lofty speeches and snarky tweets, the opening event of the 2020 election cycle is upon us. I speak of course about the first Read more >
George Orwell (aka Eric Arthur Blair) was born on this day in 1903. His most famous work, 1984, is arguably one of the most influential books of the 1940s. You probably “read” it in high school, but in case you Read more >
Two weeks ago, I decided that the novel I had just finished shouldn’t use the word and as a conjunction. Auden once wrote in denigration of his early poems that “the definite article is always a headache to any poet Read more >
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 >
Attention all fans of Irish writers, Joycean texts, and weird language crazies: Publishers Marketplace has reported that Eimear McBride, author of A Girl is a Half-formed Thing and The Lesser Bohemians, has sold a new novel to FSG entitled Strange Read more >
Today, Variety reported that Universal Pictures has optioned the rights to Rachel Khong’s 2017 novel Goodbye, Vitamin, with Constance Wu, of Crazy Rich Asians fame, attached to star and produce. Goodbye, Vitamin, Khong’s debut novel, is a tragicomedy in which a newly single Read more >
Yes, after three centuries of Broets (I’m not sorry) hogging the big chair, Oxford University—arguably the world’s most venerable institution of higher education—has elected its first female Professor of Poetry in the form of Alice Oswald, a beloved and distinguished bard Read more >
88-year-old spiritual leader and author of Be Here Now Ram Dass has sold a memoir, with Rameshwar Das, which will detail the “psychological and psychedelic transformation from Harvard professor to the spiritual and cultural icon we know today.” Ram Dass Read more >
There is something about Toni Morrison, beyond the force of her wit and prose, that keeps me in check and straightens my back when I’m inclined to slump in my seat. I don’t doubt that it’s because she and my Read more >
As of this writing, 20,056 people, presumably Christians, have signed a petition asking Netflix to cancel the “blasphemous” television show Good Omens. The petition complains that the show, which is based on Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s thoroughly beloved novel Read more >
If you’re going to be in Brooklyn on September 22nd, I highly recommend you make your way to the Brooklyn Book Festival. If you’re not going to be in Brooklyn on September 22nd, I highly recommend you change your plans. Read more >
On International Refugee Day, PEN International is issuing a call for action in the case of Behrouz Boochani, a Kurdish Iranian journalist currently detained on Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island. Boochani fled his native country of Iran in 2013 after Read more >
Best-selling memoirist, and National Book Award-winning poet Mark Doty has a new book forthcoming on April 14th, 2020, from W. W. Norton—a blend of biography, criticism, and memoir that explores Doty’s personal relationship to Walt Whitman. Here’s the cover, designed Read more >
Joy Harjo has been named the 23rd U.S. Poet Laureate, becoming the first Native American, and the first Oklahoman, to hold the position. Harjo is a member of the Muscogee Creek Nation, and lives in Tulsa. She is the author Read more >
Since 1936, the Carnegie medal has celebrated excellence in children’s literature. Past recipients include the likes of C.S. Lewis and Neil Gaiman. And now, for the first time in 83 years, a writer of color has won the UK’s most Read more >
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 >
Do you love short stories? Reading ’em, writing ’em, defending ’em against those who would dare dismiss them as a lesser literary form. You do? Well, good news! It would appear that you are very much not alone. It’s been Read more >
The 1,800-mile Poetry to the People Tour is off to a rollicking start, giving out books to underserved communities between Brooklyn and New Orleans via House of SpeakEasy‘s mobile book truck. After a late-night packing party at Pioneer Works on Read more >
You may have thought the games were over—and well, they are. But today, Scholastic announced that next year, they will publish a prequel to Suzanne Collins’ mega-bestselling Hunger Games series, set 64 years before the events of the first book Read more >
Hello from Book Marks, Lit Hub’s “rotten tomatoes for books!” How It Works: Every day, our staff scours the most important and active outlets of literary journalism—from established national broadsheets to regional weeklies and alternative litblogs—and logs their book reviews. Each Read more >
