The Hub

News, Notes, Talk

Here are the 2025 Pulitzer Prize winners.

Since 2017, the Pulitzer committee has recognized outstanding journalism, criticism, books, dramas, and achievements in music with their coveted prizes. And winners walk away with $15,000 and the endless respect of their peers. This year’s awards were announced today via Read more >

By Brittany Allen

Trump’s NEA is terminating hundreds of grants in literature, theater, and the arts.

In the last few days, publications, theater groups, arts organizations, and many other National Endowment of the Arts grant recipients have been notified that their funding has been “terminated” or “withdrawn.” 41 of the 51 Literary Arts grantees in the Read more >

By James Folta

One great short story to read today: Lydia Davis's "Happiest Moment"

According to the powers that be (er, apparently according to Dan Wickett of the Emerging Writers Network), May is Short Story Month. To celebrate, for the third year in a row, the Literary Hub staff will be recommending a single short Read more >

By Julia Hass

The week's book news, in Venn diagrams.

Another busy week in the news, and if you want to catch up quickly before the weekend, here are the big stories that were pinging around our feeds and Slack channels, in fast and easy Venn diagram form. Read more >

By James Folta

Here are the things that are making us happy this week.

This week, the Lit Hub staff is brought to you by the grace of giggles and games. James Folta is digging this “extra-bitter” riff on the Americano. The Enzo is a low-abv springtime spritz named for the Ferrari founder, and Read more >

By Brittany Allen

One great short story to read today: GennaRose Nethercott's "Sundown at the Eternal Staircase"

According to the powers that be (er, apparently according to Dan Wickett of the Emerging Writers Network), May is Short Story Month. To celebrate, for the third year in a row, the Literary Hub staff will be recommending a single short Read more >

By Drew Broussard

Canisia Lubrin has won the 2025 Carol Shields Prize.

Today, at a live event at the Chicago History Museum, Canisia Lubrin was named the winner of the 2025 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction—which honors exceptional novels, short story collections, and graphic novels by women and non-binary writers in the Read more >

By Literary Hub

An unsettling AI Agatha Christie is here to teach you how to write.

Image from Deadline & BBC Now here’s a mystery: how is a writer who died in 1976 teaching a new writing course? With a little help from academia and a little help from AI. That’s right, it’s not Poirot, but Read more >

By James Folta

A brief literary history of May Day.

Happy May Day, comrades! Today we celebrate international worker’s rights, and the rites of spring according to ye olde Pagan calendar. I hope all of you are clocking out right at five today and spending some time in the sun. Read more >

By Brittany Allen

Why Lit Hub is no longer on Twitter

“Why I’m leaving Twitter” is, at this point, an irritating genre of post. Nonetheless, it’s important to go on record in the face of Elon Musk’s vacuous amorality and its concomitant amplification of actual Nazis (not to mention his relentlessly Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

One great short story to read today: Franz Kafka's "In the Penal Colony"

According to the powers that be (er, apparently according to Dan Wickett of the Emerging Writers Network), May is Short Story Month. To celebrate, for the third year in a row, the Literary Hub staff will be recommending a single short Read more >

By Emily Temple

A field guide to the readers you’ll see in public this spring.

Spring is springing, and that means our public spaces will soon be teeming with all kinds of readers. As the air starts to warm, readers will begin to emerge from their hibernations, bleary eyed and untanned, to alight on benches, Read more >

By James Folta

Kevin Kwan! Questlove! Hungry ghosts! 25 books out in paperback this May.

May is here, and, with it, a bevy of new books to be excited about (and, difficult as it can be not to succumb to the Sisyphean rhythm of doomscrolling, new books are usually better places to turn our attention, Read more >

By Gabrielle Bellot

Pullman hive, attention! We're getting one last Dark Material.

This fall, Phillip Pullman—the man behind the His Dark Materials trilogy—will publish a final dispatch from his much-beloved multiverse. The Rose Field will cap the adventures of Lyra Silvertongue, the flinty, brilliant heroine who makes the mother of dragons look Read more >

By Brittany Allen

Sophie Gilbert! Craig Thompson! Crazy Rich Ghanaians! 24 new books out today.

It’s the final Tuesday of April, a month characterized by chaos and Eliotesque cruelties alike, but there is more brightness in the (literal) skies, if nothing else, and to accompany this much-needed sun in a time of strangedark, I come Read more >

By Gabrielle Bellot

The new Conduit Books plans to focus on male authors.

A new press will be “focusing initially” on publishing male writers, reported The Bookseller today. Finally, a space for guys to be guys. The press is called Conduit Books, and will be run by novelist and critic Jude Cook. There’s Read more >

By James Folta