The Hub

News, Notes, Talk

Can you manage to read at the beach? A summertime choose your own adventure.

Many pitfalls and impediments lay between you and a day of enjoying your book in peace. Can you manage to get past everything arrayed against you? Choose wisely! Your phone buzzes. A text: “Hey we’re all headed out to the Read more >

By James Folta

Here are the literary adaptations to look out for at this year's Cannes Film Festival.

Since the 1930s, the annual Cannes international film festival has been a glamorous hub for new cinema. (And, according to an audacious claim on its website: the world’s “most widely publicized cultural event.”) While the festival’s carefully cultivated position at Read more >

By Brittany Allen

One great short story to read today:
Sarah Gailey's "The Daily Commute"

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 second year in a row, the Literary Hub staff will be recommending a single short story, Read more >

By Drew Broussard

King Charles' new royal portrait as Romantasy covers.

If you’re anything like us, you took one look at King Charles’ new royal portrait and thought, “This looks like cover art for a Romantasy book.” The red-washed painting is perfect for a book about a lonely king falling in Read more >

By James Folta

Expand your mind with a new magazine of psychedelic art and literature.

Are you ready to take a trip? Elastic, a biannual print magazine of psychedelic art and literature that will debut in spring 2025, aims to publish art and writing that’s “immersive, dreamlike, daring, genre- and time-bending, and that acts to Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

Gollum is getting his own spinoff. But is it really necessary?

Get in, loser. We’re apparently headed…back to the Shire. That’s right, all you elves and hobbits. You Dúnedain and Nazgûl. Earlier this week, news dropped of an addition to the ever-expanding Lord of the Rings’ cinematic universe. According to OG Read more >

By Brittany Allen

One great short story to read today: Deesha Philyaw's "Eula"

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 second year in a row, the Literary Hub staff will be recommending a single short story, Read more >

By Emily Temple

200 authors call on Baillie Gifford to divest from Israel and fossil fuels.

Ahead of the UK festival season, more than 200 authors—including Naomi Klein, Sally Rooney, Natalie Diaz, and Robert Macfarlane—have signed a statement by Fossil Free Books (FFB) which puts increased pressure on investment management firm Baillie Gifford, sponsors of the Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

A bunch of fake Kathleen Hanna biographies were released on the same day as her new memoir.

Yesterday, the iconic Riot Grrrl Kathleen Hanna published a memoir with Ecco/HarperCollins. And Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk is already being touted as an “electric, searing” history from one of rock’s biggest icons. Unfortunately, the book has Read more >

By Brittany Allen

One great short story to read today: John Cheever's "The Enormous Radio"

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 second year in a row, the Literary Hub staff will be recommending a single short story, Read more >

By Emily Temple

5 great bug books to read while you’re hiding from the cicada explosion.

Billions of cicadas are about to hatch this spring and summer, as both the 13- and 17-year cicada broods converge in one historic emergence. This overlap between broods happens just once ever 221 years, which makes it a much rarer Read more >

By James Folta

Commemorate Nakba Day with an evening of readings in NYC.

Tomorrow evening, May 15th, at the People’s Forum in Manhattan, the Radical Books Collective and The Polis Project will join forces to organize an evening of readings titled Nakba Then and Now: Refuse Silence to amplify the Palestinian liberation struggle, Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

One great short story to read today: Ursula K. Le Guin's "The Day Before the Revolution"

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 second year in a row, the Literary Hub staff will be recommending a single short story, Read more >

By James Folta

Hari Kunzru! Freud! System of a Down (the memoir)! 26 new books out today.

It’s just about the middle of May, and as the wheel of the year turns towards summer, you may find yourself in need of summer-appropriately-bright-and-hot new literature to read. Well, Dear Reader, you may just be in luck. Below, you’ll Read more >

By Gabrielle Bellot

Meet the novelists who are re-analyzing HBO's Girls.

For the past two years, the novelist Alice Elliott Dark has been sending out missives on the writing and reading life via her popular weekly Substack, “Alice on Sunday.” But this March, Dark applied her platform to a curious task: Read more >

By Brittany Allen

The strange, online lives of "book husbands."

Screenshots from TikTok If you spend any time on BookTok or Bookstagram or book-adjacent Reddit (Bookit? Booddit? Boot?), you’ve probably come across the “book husband.” Since encountering the phrase, I haven’t been able to shake it. I’ve been muttering things Read more >

By James Folta

One great short story to read today:
Leone Ross's "The Woman Who Lived in a Restaurant"

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 second year in a row, the Literary Hub staff will be recommending a single short story, Read more >

By McKayla Coyle

Colson Whitehead has withdrawn as a 2024 commencement speaker. Who will be next?

Yesterday afternoon, the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Colson Whitehead (The Underground Railroad, The Nickel Boys) announced that he would no longer be giving the commencement address at University of Massachusetts Amherst on May 18, citing the administration’s decision to call the Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

Ben Stiller will channel his best Norman Mailer in a new true crime movie.

Images from Montclair Film and Bernard Gotfryd Ben Stiller is set to play writer Norman Mailer alongside Oscar-nominated-and-robbed actor Colin Farrell in the upcoming Belly of The Beast. The movie is set to be directed by Andrew Haigh of All Read more >

By James Folta

One great short story to read today:
Lydia Davis's "Break it Down"

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 second year in a row, the Literary Hub staff will be recommending a single short story, Read more >

By Emily Temple