The Hub

News, Notes, Talk

What to read next based on your favorite Tony nominee.

This Sunday, Broadway will recognize some of the year’s plays and musicals with a shiny celebration and a great many inside jokes. Maybe you’ve seen some of the nominated plays. Or maybe you will, later, when they reach PBS or Read more >

By Brittany Allen

Why Polidori's The Vampyre was falsely attributed to Lord Byron.

One night in the rainy summer of 1816, at Lord Byron’s summer estate, Villa Diodati, in Cologny, near Geneva, Switzerland, Byron, and his friends Percy and Mary Shelley passed the time by telling ghost stories. The stories they created would Read more >

By Olivia Rutigliano

Creative ways to show off your prestige galley.

Finally, you’ve got an advanced copy of a hotly anticipated forthcoming book. Reading it will be great—sure, whatever—but showing it off is going to be even better. Go beyond the coy Instagram posting, and elevate your galley brag game.   Read more >

By James Folta

The 2024 Young Lions Fiction Award goes to E.J. Koh.

Hear ye, hear ye! The Seattle-based novelist E.J. Koh has won the 24th annual NYPL Young Lions Fiction Award for her book The Liberators.  A time and space-hopping epic following two Korean families, The Liberators enlists “memory, trauma, and empathy” to Read more >

By Brittany Allen

The Refaat Mobile Library is raising funds for Gaza.

The good people behind the Refaat Mobile Library—a traveling memorial library created in honor of Refaat Alareer, the beloved Palestinian poet and educator who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in December—are holding an emergency fundraiser for Gaza, and they could Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

Here are the winners of the 2024 Women's Prizes.

At a ceremony on Thursday in London, The Women’s Prize Trust, which “creates equitable opportunities for women in the world of books,” announced the winner of the 2024 Women’s Prize for Fiction—as well as the winner of the inaugural Women’s Read more >

By Literary Hub

Have you ever wondered what W. B. Yeats looked like as a baby?

Of course you have. It keeps most of us up at night. Well, wonder no more. Earlier today, in honor of the Irish Nobel Prize winner’s 159th birthday, the Twitter account of Lissadell House (“the crucible of Ireland’s historic, literary Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

I think I’ve been demonically possessed by this Bible App ad.

If you’ve been on the New York subway lately, you’ve probably seen this ad, imagining Satan leaving a zero-star review for Bible App: “Zero Stars. Would not recommend.” And if you’ve been on the New York subway with me lately, Read more >

By James Folta

Ted Chiang has won the PEN/Faulkner Foundation’s short story prize.

Photo by Arturo Villarrubia Science fiction writer Ted Chiang has won the 2024 PEN/Bernard and Ann Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story. The award is given each year to a writer who has “demonstrated exceptional achievement in the short Read more >

By James Folta

1979’s The Book-Store Book documents a lost borough of booksellers.

In 1979, President Jimmy Carter established the Department of Education and was attacked by a rabbit. In 1979, New York City Mayor Ed Koch was in his first term, and The Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” broke into the Top 40. Read more >

By James Folta

New literary podcasts to add to your queue.

Say you’re no newb to the literary podcast. You’ve got Brad Listi’s “Other Ppl,” “Between the Covers,” and “The Maris Review,” sitting pride of place in your digital library. And—perhaps inspired by this very website—you’ve been tickling your cochlea lately Read more >

By Brittany Allen

Here are the guest editors (and new covers!) for the Best American Series 2024.

The Best American Series is a literary institution. But just in case you’re stumbling upon it for the first time: Each book in the annual series showcases of best short fiction and nonfiction in a given year, from short stories Read more >

By Literary Hub

Robert Pinsky! Porochista Khakpour! Rufi Thorpe! 26 new books out today.

Dear Readers, it is once again Tuesday, and that means, as ever, that there are new things to read and rejoice in. And today is no exception, for there are many, many exciting new books to consider. I’ve compiled twenty-six Read more >

By Gabrielle Bellot

Attention: Soon you'll be able to do a writing residency in Ursula Le Guin’s home.

Ursula Le Guin’s family and Literary Arts in Portland announced today that Le Guin’s old home will become soon become the Ursula K. Le Guin Writers Residency. That’s right, you might be able to write at the desk where Le Read more >

By James Folta

This retelling of Pride & Prejudice has five Mary Bennets.

Everyone knows that there are five Bennet sisters: Jane, Elizabeth, Mary, Catherine (Kitty), and Lydia. But what would happen if Jane Austen’s Longbourn estate were full of Marys, the Bennets’ most boring and tedious daughter, instead of just one? A Read more >

By James Folta

Here are the winners of the 2023 Nebula Awards.

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of American (SFWA) has announced the winners of the 2023 Nebula Awards, one of SFF’s most prestigious honors, “given to the writers of the most outstanding speculative fiction works released in 2023.” Here are Read more >

By Drew Broussard