The Hub

News, Notes, Talk

A new Mosab Abu Toha poetry collection is coming this fall.

Mosab Abu Toha—the Palestinian poet, scholar, and librarian who was forced to flee Gaza with his family back in December—is set to release a new collection of poems this fall. According to the announcement made on Publishers Marketplace earlier today, Forest Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

The Women’s Prize for Fiction has announced their 2024 shortlist.

The Women’s Prize Trust, which “creates equitable opportunities for women in the world of books,” has announced the shortlist for its fiction prize, which spotlights English-language novels written by women. This year, the shortlists highlighted six novels that “both focus Read more >

By James Folta

Read China Miéville's powerful letter rejecting a German fellowship.

I stand in solidarity with the countless German workers and activists within institutions such as yours who are appalled by and fighting against the current climate of racism, censorship, rising authoritarianism and atrocity-denial. Free Palestine. –China Miéville   In a Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

Please welcome the 2024-25 class of Cullman fellows.

The New York Public Library’s Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center has announced its annual class of Fellows. Awarded annually, The Cullman fellowship entitles a gifted cadre of writers and academics to a year of funding, a private office, and Read more >

By Brittany Allen

The literary romantic holiday that should replace Valentine's Day.

I’ve never really liked Valentine’s Day. Some of that is probably down to being a shy nerdy kid who couldn’t get a date to the Snow Dance—but, at the risk of sounding even more like Charlie Brown, the holiday is Read more >

By Drew Broussard

Sad about Pitchfork? Try one of these classic collections of music writing.

On waking last Friday to news that somewhere, some poets were being tortured, I spent some time trawling through album reviews. Music criticism has always fascinated me. On the one hand, there is something ineffable baked into the enterprise. (I Read more >

By Brittany Allen

Jane Smiley! Judi Dench! Amy Tan on birding! 24 new books out today.

Ah, another Tuesday in April, a month (apparently) of earthquakes and eclipses, thunderstorms and thunderous yells about filing taxes. (Or was that just me?) Whatever the month in 2024 may mean to you, this particular Tuesday signifies something special: a Read more >

By Gabrielle Bellot

What would Spy magazine think of Graydon Carter’s new store?

Image from Air Mail’s Instagram The foibles and flailings of the very rich, the very powerful, and the very New York were once the targets of Spy, the pioneering magazine started by Kurt Anderson and Graydon Carter. Spy once sent Read more >

By James Folta

What you need to know about the Freydís Moon author scandal.

Another day, another literary scandal. Such is BookX in 2024. Buckle up, for today brings news of an especially strange case of dissembling, involving a fantasy author writing under a few different racial identities and a handful of pseudonyms. I’m Read more >

By Brittany Allen

The PEN America Literary Awards have been cancelled.

Following months of escalating protest over the organization’s response to Israel’s war on Gaza, and the recent withdrawal of over a third of this year’s nominees, the 2024 PEN America Literary Awards have now officially been cancelled.   In the last Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

Palestinian American poet Fady Joudah has won the $100,000 Jackson Poetry Prize.

Acclaimed Palestinian American poet, translator, and physician Fady Joudah has received a $100,000 prize from Poets & Writers. The Jackson Poetry Prize is awarded annually to an American poet of “exceptional talent,” and was chosen this year by a panel Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

These are the "most influential" writers of the year.

This week, TIME magazine published its annual list of the 100 Most Influential People of the year. Usually, when this list comes out, I complain (to the universe, I guess) that there aren’t enough novelists (“enough” meaning “more than one”) on it. Read more >

By Emily Temple

Against spring cleaning: The books the Lit Hub staff just can't let go of.

If you’ve ever deep-cleaned your bookshelves, you’ve likely faced some hard choices over what to hang onto and what to donate to the library. As much as you might want to clear space by off-loading beat-up copies, shelf redundancies, books Read more >

By James Folta

Here are the finalists for the NYPL's 2024 Young Lions Fiction Award.

The New York Public Library announced their Young Lions Fiction Award finalists today. Since 2001, the award has honored a writer under 35 for a novel or story collection. This year, the selection committee, composed of writers, editors, and librarians, Read more >

By James Folta

The official trailer for One Hundred Years of Solitude is here.

Gabo-heads (Gab-lins?), rejoice: the trailer for the upcoming mini-series adaptation of the Márquez masterpiece, One Hundred Years of Solitude, has officially dropped. And though we’ve been burned before by attempts to put the master’s works on celluloid (Love in the Time Read more >

By Brittany Allen

A case for replacing the Times' op-ed section with these classic columns.

In a recent entry from his excellent newsletter “How Things Work,” the labor journalist Hamilton Nolan decried the state of the column, as epitomized in the op-ed section of the paper of record. In a snort-inducing takedown, Nolan argued that Read more >

By Brittany Allen

What if Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales came out today?

Today is the anniversary of Geoffrey Chaucer’s first reading of  The Canterbury Tales in 1387, when he performed the epic at the court of King Richard II. It’s the perfect day to reread a tale or two, rewatch A Knight’s Read more >

By James Folta

A new Ocean Vuong novel is coming next summer.

Ocean Vuong has a new novel set to be published in June 2025, as announced on Publishers Marketplace and Vuong’s Instagram. The Emperor of Gladness is Vuong’s second novel, and “follows a year in the life of a wayward young Read more >

By James Folta

What is the point of the author interview?

This weekend, inspired by a rewatch of James L. Brooks’ 1987 masterpiece Broadcast News, I got to thinking about the art (and point) of the interview. Especially here, on our little island called the literary world.  There’s a real and Read more >

By Brittany Allen

Véra Nabokov! Darkly humorous sleaze! 22 new books out today.

It’s the middle of April, a time when the transcendent experience of seeing a total eclipse the previous week—if you were lucky enough to geographically and meteorologically—has, for many readers, been eclipsed by the signature rain and lightning of the Read more >

By Gabrielle Bellot