The Hub

News, Notes, Talk

Watch the first tantalizing trailer for Little Fires Everywhere.

That’s right, Celeste Ng fans: a trailer for Little Fires Everywhere, the star-studded Hulu adaptation of Ng’s wildly-successful 2017 novel—about the intertwined fates of the picture-perfect Richardson family and the enigmatic mother and daughter who upend their lives when they move to Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

Esmé Weijun Wang, Danielle Evans, and Aaliyah: the week's most exciting 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

Here are PEN America's 2020 literary awards longlists.

PEN America has just announced its literary longlists for 2020. The awards will confer over $330,000 in total to writers and translators whose exceptional literary works were published in 2019. The categories span fiction, nonfiction, poetry, biography, essay, science writing, Read more >

By Eleni Theodoropoulos

Susan Choi's Trust Exercise is coming to your television.

Congrats to Susan Choi for ending the year on a high note: her novel Trust Exercise, which won this year’s National Book Award for Fiction, is in development to become a limited television series with FilmNation Entertainment. Choi will write Read more >

By Corinne Segal

Kosovo declares Peter Handke "persona non grata" as Nobel controversy continues.

Peter Handke, the Austrian writer whose Nobel win has been causing upheaval in the literary world since it was announced in October, is now persona non grata in Kosovo, the country’s foreign minister Behgjet Pacolli announced Wednesday. Handke, who has Read more >

By Corinne Segal

Announcing the winners of the 2019 Brittle Paper Awards.

Brittle Paper, an online magazine that publishes English-language writing by authors of African descent, announced the five winners of the 2019 Brittle Paper Awards on Wednesday. Brittle Paper, now in its ninth year, was created to “archive the wealth of Read more >

By Aaron Robertson

Book-shaped objects are the new books: 25 great gifts for people who love books but not reading.

Everyone has that one friend who identifies as a “book lover” or a “book person” or simply “bookish.” Well, okay, one might think, but which books do they love? All books? It can’t be. (And yet.) So when the holidays Read more >

By Emily Temple

How does the Nobel Prize affect book sales? (And what if there's controversy?)

In the publishing world, it seems like winning the Nobel Prize just isn’t what it used to be. A Deutsche Welle interview with Lucien Leitess, director of the Swiss publishing house Unionsverlag, explored the business of predicting a Nobel laureate’s Read more >

By Aaron Robertson

Baz Luhrmann is adapting The Master and Margarita for the big screen.

Almost three years ago, we reported that Mikhail Bulgakov’s masterpiece The Master and Margarita (a book we might love slightly too much) was being developed into a feature film by Svetlana Migunova-Dali and Grace Loh. Now Deadline reports that Baz Read more >

By Emily Temple

De’Shawn Charles Winslow wins 2019 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize.

Huge congratulations to De’Shawn Charles Winslow, who last night took home the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize for his acclaimed debut In West Mills. Winslow was presented with the prestigious prize—which has in previous years been awarded to Junot Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

Here's how to livestream Margaret Atwood's birthday party.

Margaret Atwood is having an 80th birthday celebration tonight, and you’re invited (to watch the festivities via a livestream)! The New York Public Library is hosting the celebration of Atwood’s life and work, featuring readings from Claire Danes, Ann Dowd, Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

It's a Chrismukkah miracle: The Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is finally getting adapted.

Attention comic book nerds, Pulitzer Prize committee members, and all enthusiasts of historical and/or fantastical fiction: at long last, Michael Chabon’s magnum opus, the Pulitzer Prize winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, is finally being adapted—not as a Read more >

By Corinne Segal

Announcing the line-up for this year's Mission Creek Festival in Iowa City.

The 15th Annual Mission Creek Festival, an indie music and lit mainstay, will be held in Iowa City on April 1-4, 2020. The great thing about Mission Creek is the way it aspires to turn music lovers onto new lit, Read more >

By Literary Hub

Here are the new books you should be reading this week.

Every week, the TBR pile grows a little bit more. It’s getting precarious. It’s taking up your whole nightstand. It’s threatening to crush you in your sleep. Well, what are you waiting for? Get cracking. FICTION Perumal Murugan, tr. N. Read more >

By Katie Yee

With more people searching for it than ever, "they" is Merriam-Webster's word of the year.

Validating many of us who have fought this fight in comment sections, newsrooms, and DMs for years (years!!!!), Merriam-Webster announced today that the pronoun “they” is its word of the year. Searches for “they” rose by 313 percent in 2019; Read more >

By Corinne Segal

Reminder: Boris Johnson wrote a racist novel in 2004.

In case you missed it, Boris Johnson wrote a novel called Seventy Two Virgins and it’s even worse than you might think: “Hooked nose” Kosovar Muslims, Jews who control the media, “half-caste” characters, a “Chinaman,” hunter-gatherer African immigrants, and all Read more >

By Jonny Diamond