The Hub

News, Notes, Talk

Ray Bradbury still deserves birthday sex, even after all these years.

Ray Bradbury was born on this day in 1920. You know him: the renowned sci-fi and fantasy writer. You probably read Fahrenheit 451 in high school. But did you know that he tried to write for The Twilight Zone? And that he Read more >

By Katie Yee

David Lynch's 5 favorite books include these surprising beach reads!

lol. jk. My dude has never been to the beach. Dave’s actual Top 5 list (according to Far Out magazine) is, of course, a throughly Lynchian quintet of unheimlich surrealism, existentialist historical fiction, disturbing found photography, hundred-year-old art criticism, and auteur Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

Famous writer Bill Clinton umpired this past weekend’s Writers vs. Artists charity softball game (which is still a thing!)

Since 1948—back when artist types moved to the East End of Long Island because it was cheap!—the likes of Jackson Pollock, Willem de Koonig, Barney Rosset, James Jones, Kurt Vonnegut, and many, many more famous people (Lauren Bacall and Yogi Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

Something nice: area heathen takes oath of office on Oh, The Places You'll Go!

Every once in a while, something is just nice—like this story about Kelli Dunaway, a newly elected St. Louis County councilwoman, taking her oath of office on the Dr. Seuss classic Oh, The Places You’ll Go! Another lovely detail: her two Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

Shh... “ASMR" might soon appear in your dictionary.

You’ve probably heard of ASMR—that soothing, tingling feeling that some of us get in response to certain sounds or sensations, and which has spawned a universe of YouTube videos, some of them inspired by the original “ASMRtist,” Bob Ross. Yeah, Read more >

By Emily Temple

The Matrix 4 is happening, and Aleksandar Hemon and David Mitchell wrote the script.

Welcome back to the 90s. (And, I guess, the early 2000s.) As Variety reports, there is officially a fourth Matrix film in the works, with Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss back in the saddle as Neo and Trinity. Lana Wachowski will Read more >

By Emily Temple

Not parody: Please enjoy this interview with Gwyneth Paltrow's "book curator."

Because of course Gwyneth Paltrow has a “book curator,” a title that sounds both utterly pretentious (that would be the “curator”) and reeeeeeeally stupid, which is the sweet spot of Extreme Wealth Culture. (Shoutout Town & Country!) And as is Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

NPR: The world is on fire but these books are funny.

Are you super sick of the news? So is NPR! It published a list, based on votes from more than 7,000 people, of the funniest books as selected by readers, hopefully some of which can help us all counter a Read more >

By Corinne Segal

Meryl Streep to star in a new Steven Soderbergh film written by Deborah Eisenberg!

Well this is a happy Hollywood mad lib: HBO Max has announced that Meryl Streep will star in Steven Soderbergh’s next project, Let Them All Talk, a lit-world cruise drama (please let this become a niche genre) written by the Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

New Books Tuesday: Your weekly guide to what’s publishing today, fiction and nonfiction.

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

Olivia Laing calls out Boris Johnson, splits £10,000 literary prize with fellow nominees.

Celebrated British writer and cultural critic Olivia Laing has been widely praised for her decision to split her James Tate Black award winnings with her fellow shortlisted authors. “I said in Crudo that competition has no place in art and Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

Here are the winners of the 2019 Hugo Awards.

The winners of the 2019 Hugo Awards—one of science fiction and fantasy’s most prestigious awards, decided by the popular vote of Worldcon members—were presented last night at a ceremony at the 77th World Science Fiction Convention in Dublin, Ireland. Congratulations Read more >

By Emily Temple

Grammar nerds, Medieval dicks, and more of LitHub.com’s most read stories of the week.

The great thing about editing a website is that even though you tell yourself you have a pretty good idea of what’s going to do well, you are very often wrong. In that spirit of confusion and happy accident, here Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

Your weekly deal memo: Carl Zimmer, Baba Yaga, Anita Diamant & more.

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

Today in "AI will replace us all." Author avatars can now read their books to you.

Every so often, we get a bit of the future that looks more like the hoverboards we were promised and less like the nightmare Octavia Butler predicted. Such is the case with the news that Chinese search engine Sogou is using Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

These are the 10 most popular books in America this week.

Hello from Book Marks, Lit Hub’s “rotten tomatoes for books!” The ten books below are the ones our readers searched for most this week—including Sarah M. Broom’s family memoir, New Yorker writer Jia Tolentino’s debut essay collection, and Orange Prize-winner Téa Obreht’s Read more >

By Katie Yee