The Hub

News, Notes, Talk

How good is your 'Stellaaaaa'? Do your best at the Tennessee Williams fest this weekend.

If you’ve ever fancied yourself a basic kind of man driven by simple (violent) desires, you might like to enter the 2023 Stella Shouting contest, which takes place this weekend, ahead of next week’s Tennessee Williams & New Orleans Literary Read more >

By Janet Manley

Why authors might want to pay to go on a podcast.

Gone are the days when you could write a book a chapter at a time and hook people in a slow, serial burn. Now, if the internet is to believed, one must amass 100,000 followers on social media before they Read more >

By Janet Manley

The Outsiders is now a musical.

Listen… can you hear the denim moving across a stage in California, the swish of gelled hair? S.E. Hinton’s beloved novel The Outsiders has been adapted into a musical at La Jolla Playhouse, with solid reviews following the open. If Read more >

By Janet Manley

Quiz: Should you read that divorce novel?

There is a literary phenomenon that afflicts married people, in which a writer they have embraced as speaking their very thoughts puts out a new book, and it is a divorce book. This triggers a certain paranoid crisis: do you Read more >

By Janet Manley

Woman born in library celebrates 94th by returning to the stacks whence she came.

“I like to think I sprang from a head,” Patricia Lockwood once wrote, “I like to think the head was mine.” We cannot all come into the world with divine knowledge of the written word immaculately stacked into the halls Read more >

By Janet Manley

Watch the trailer for the new Judy Blume documentary, Judy Blume Forever.

Here’s the latest development in the Year of Judy Blume: the trailer for the first ever Judy Blume documentary, Judy Blume Forever, produced by Imagine Documentaries and slated to premiere on Prime Video on Friday April 21. “Just like her Read more >

By Emily Temple

Read a previously unpublished story by Tennessee Williams.

Today, over at Conjunctions, you can read “Every Friday Nite is Kiddies Nite,” a previously unpublished short story by Tennessee Williams—part of the forthcoming collection The Caterpillar Dogs and Other Early Stories, which will be published by New Directions in Read more >

By Emily Temple

Exclusive cover reveal: Elizabeth Crook’s The Madstone

Literary Hub is pleased to reveal the cover for Elizabeth Crook’s The Madstone, forthcoming from Little Brown in November 2023. Here’s a little more about The Madstone, from the publisher: A pregnant mother and her son—on the run from her violent Read more >

By Literary Hub

Remembering Ian Falconer, children's author and force at The New Yorker.

Caldecott Honoree Ian Falconer died Tuesday aged 63, The New Yorker reported in a remembrance. Falconer was the author of the lovable early-aughts Olivia series, starring the famous pig, having created the first story as a gift for his niece Olivia Read more >

By Janet Manley

Co-opening a bookstore is the new driving off a cliff with your bestie.

One day, the friends have had enough with their husbands, their jobs, their lives, and decide to make a break for it. They grip hands, stuff their weapons* into the glove box, and… open a bookstore together. It’s a thing. Read more >

By Janet Manley

The one where Margaret Atwood gave a cracking WIRED interview.

For someone who has foreseen the downfall of society, Margaret Atwood sure is chipper and fast with the reparteé. Take her recent WIRED interview with Kate Knibbs (lucky you, Kate!), who did a great job of facilitating a wide-ranging and Read more >

By Janet Manley

6 new books to get your hands on this week.

Here are some fascinating new books to check out this week! * Rafael Frumkin, Confidence (Simon and Schuster) “Theranos but make it gay.” –Electric Literature Leila Aboulela, River Spirit (Grove) “Aboulela reveals the thin lines that can demarcate religious zeal and patriotic Read more >

By Gabrielle Bellot

Bestseller The Book of Animal Secrets has one more: plagarism.

The Book of Animal Secrets: Nature’s Lessons for a Long and Happy Life is not supposed to publish until tomorrow, March 7th, but is already a bestseller thanks to author Dr. David Agus’s comfort in the media habitat. He has been Read more >

By Janet Manley

The Tiny Beautiful Things trailer is here so let's hop into the mess.

Dear Sugar fans, it’s here: the Tiny Beautiful Things trailer, starring Kathryn Hahn as Clare (the Cheryl Strayed stand-in), with appearances in flashback by Merritt Wever as her mother and Maggie Rogers setting a fire in the background. Time to Read more >

By Janet Manley

It's okay, baby girl, here are 9 more literary daddies to clutch.

Having never played The Last of Us the video game, I envision HBO’s adaptation as, essentially, The Mandalorian with Lyanna Mormont in place of baby Yoda. There is something fundamentally heart-murmur-inducing about a man clad in literal or emotional armor Read more >

By Janet Manley

Marianne Williamson returns to the presidential race (and to love) for a second time.

You cannot be president unless you first allow yourself to imagine yourself as president. So goes the wisdom of self-help author and new-age guru Marianne Williamson, who is back, baby, with a 2024 run for the top job (before enlightenment Read more >

By Janet Manley

R.L. Stine's spooky fingers have been polishing up Goosebumps for sensitivity.

UPDATE MARCH 8: Contrary to first reports, R.L. Stine did not perform these edits! Rather, the publisher, Scholastic, employed the changes. Have some decency, he is not yet in the ground! * Whether or not you find it creepy for Read more >

By Janet Manley

Dua Lipa is a Little Life superfan.

In case you were wondering, today over at the Booker Prize website, Dua Lipa has planted her flag squarely in the pro-A Little Life camp. “I will happily admit, as a devoted and lifelong reader, that there are more than a Read more >

By Emily Temple

Uh oh, trouble in Amazon-headquarters-town.

In big news for The Shop Around the Corner, Amazon.com Inc. was reported today to be pausing construction on its second headquarters in Virginia, per Bloomberg. Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, let the cranes dangle idly alongside Read more >

By Janet Manley

BookTok sensation Bunny is headed to the silver screen.

Bad Robot has snagged the film rights to Mona Awad’s bestselling 2019 novel Bunny—a bloody satire of elite MFA programs that became a BookTok sensation after a Bunny movie fan-casting hashtag went viral. How viral? Somewhere in the region of 4.1 Read more >

By Dan Sheehan