The Hub

News, Notes, Talk

Colson Whitehead, Jericho Brown, and Anne Boyer just won Pulitzer Prizes.

The winners of this year’s Pulitzer Prizes were just announced via video stream. Originally scheduled for April 20th, the announcement was postponed this year because of the pandemic. The award ceremony, typically held in May at Columbia University, will be Read more >

By Katie Yee

Highly recommended: the intimacy of correspondence via voice message.

I have long enjoyed exchanging recorded “letters” with loved ones thousands of miles away. There’s something about the voicemail-as-letter that doesn’t quite have the formal pressure of the written word, but can also exist outside the stresses and banalities of Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

Remembering Frank O'Hara's New York—and his generosity.

Fifty-seven years ago this month, Frank O’Hara moved into his last New York apartment, a floor-through loft at 791 broadway, across from Grace Church. As Brad Gooch describes it in his fabulous biography, City Poet, the place sounds like a deal. Read more >

By John Freeman

Get ready for another Twilight novel.

Well, here’s something! Stephenie Meyer announced on Good Morning America that she would release Midnight Sun, a retelling of the Twilight saga from the perspective of the emotionally abusive vampire. In 2008, Meyer abandoned the manuscript after the first 12 chapters were leaked Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

The National Book Foundation's Innovations in Reading Prize goes to DIBS for Kids.

The National Book Foundation’s Innovations in Reading Prize is awarded every year to an individual or organization that has encouraged a lifelong love of reading. This year’s award goes to DIBS for Kids, a Nebraska-based literacy nonprofit that’s dedicated to Read more >

By Katie Yee

Happy May Day! We’re not working today.

Dear Lit Hub reader, we’re taking the day off. We’ve published a lot of great stories today, so you’ll be fine, but we’re not going to be blogging at The Hub (or replying to emails, or making jokes on the Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

Adam Driver is set to star in (yet another) adaptation of a David Grann article.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that every article David Grann writes will be turned into a Hollywood film. In the last five years, four of the award-winning New Yorker staff writer’s longform pieces have been adapted for the screen (“True Crime,” “Lost Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

Joy Harjo will serve a second term as U.S. Poet Laureate.

Today, the Library of Congress announced that Librarian Carla Hayden has appointed beloved poet Joy Harjo to serve a second term as the 23rd Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry for the United States. “Joy Harjo is such an inspiring and Read more >

By Emily Temple

Join Rita Dove, Elizabeth Alexander, and others for a virtual reading tonight.

Well, it’s almost May, and you know what that means: the end of the weirdest National Poetry Month of all of our lives. To close it out, the Academy of American Poets has organized Shelter In Poems: A Virtual Reading, Read more >

By Corinne Segal

Left-wing indie publishers have formed a coalition to support each other during the pandemic.

As the coronavirus pandemic continues to highlight the massive and devastating inequality in the US, the work of socially progressive publishers is more important than ever. With the goal of supporting one another during the uncertainty of the pandemic, a Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

Michelle Obama was the world's 3rd highest-paid author in 2019.

The Obamas are building a media empire, one that has already seen such immense success you would think they were Old Hollywood. Barack and Michelle Obama’s production company, Higher Ground, scored a big victory earlier this year when a documentary Read more >

By Aaron Robertson

Everything we know about the new Tana French novel coming this fall.

I don’t know about you, but I am desperate, these days, for good news—not to mention things to look forward to. So I was happy to be alerted this afternoon to one undeniably good thing in the pipeline of the Read more >

By Emily Temple

Dozens of Portuguese writers are creating an exquisite corpse-style novel.

While the rest of us feel guilty about not using our quarantine productively, a group of 46 Portuguese writers is co-authoring a serial novel that begins with scientists searching for the vaccine to a virus that has overtaken the globe. Read more >

By Corinne Segal

Here are some book memes created by an AI meme generator.

The best thing I saw on Twitter yesterday had absolutely nothing to do with Sally Rooney; it was the delightfully bonkers AI meme generator. After nearly an hour spent in a cycle of refresh, cackle, and repeat, I’m more than Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

Now you can use your favorite indie bookstore as your Zoom background.

Wish you could visit your favorite indie bookstore right now? For the next best thing (sort of), Lookout Books has partnered with a handful of beloved indie bookstores to bring you, Zoom users (as we all are now), free virtual Read more >

By Julia Hass

Even our UFO content is relevant in 2020.

Before we lose our minds over the (exhilarating) mic drop yesterday by the Pentagon confirming that, yes, those images of unidentified aerial phenomena taken by Navy pilots and posted by former Blink-182 frontman and UFO enthusiast Tom DeLonge were, in fact, Read more >

By Aaron Robertson