Behold: the first paperbacks of the year. * Jean Chen Ho, Fiona and Jane (Penguin, January 3) “A wonderful debut … [Fiona and Jane] is a book that is built on memory, a book that speaks to the importance and Read more >
Today, the Robert B. Silvers Foundation announced the winners of their second annual Silvers-Dudley Prizes, which recognize “outstanding achievement in literary criticism, arts writing, and journalism.” The prizes, which carry a total value of $135,000, will award between $15,000 and Read more >
Happy New Year, readers. Recently, I’ve been seeing this trend on Instagram of people proclaiming what is in in 2023, and what is decidedly out. Here are mine. What’s out: Biker shorts. Electric scooters on the sidewalk. Maybe Twitter? Leaving Read more >
For today’s entry in Stories That Simply Feel Right: The tale of Nancy Crampton Brophy—self-published romance novelist and author of the (in retrospect, ill-advised) essay “How to Murder Your Husband,” who was recently convicted of, yes, murdering her husband—is coming Read more >
Famous meme-lord and loser-of-billions Elon Musk is once again using the $44 billion message board he bought to share his erudition. Last night Musk Tweeted what looks like an old meme whipped up by an edgy 15-year-old who just lost Read more >
Here’s a piece of good literary news to start the year: a new independent bookstore named after the legendary Octavia E. Butler is opening in Pasadena, California, where the late Sci-Fi icon was born and raised. I took the leap Read more >
In 2019, for the first time in over two decades, a new crop of literary work entered the public domain: everything first published in the United States in 1923 became available for reusing, recycling, and remixing. Since then, we’ve had a Read more >
Lit Hub is pleased to share the cover for Safiya Sinclair’s forthcoming memoir, How to Say Babylon, which Simon and Schuster will publish this summer. Sinclair is the author of the poetry collection Cannibal, winner of a Whiting Writers’ Award, the Read more >
I get that we live in harrowing times, and that global pandemics can leave us feeling powerless and entirely without agency, but taking the time to laboriously disinfect your used books is *not* going to change that—and it might even Read more >
Another year, another batch of new books to look forward to. If any of your resolutions involve reading more, we’ve got you covered. * Deepti Kapoor, Age of Vice (Riverhead) “Riveting … Kapoor paints a mesmerizing picture of violence and Read more >
Donna Tartt’s cozy/murderous winter classic The Secret History, which turned 30 this year, is Today’s December Read With Jenna Pick—and the famously publicity-agnostic Tartt answered a few questions about the book and her experiences over the last 30 years for Read more >
For those of you anticipating—or dreading—Noah Baumbach’s new adaptation of White Noise, which officially releases on Netflix on December 30th, fun news! You can get a jumpstart and read the screenplay in its entirety, courtesy of Deadline. Tragically, the screenplay does not Read more >
Happy Birthday to one of the greatest Christmas stories ever told, Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, which was published on this date in 1843. Dickens—who, like all writers, needed money at the time—wrote the now-classic parable of avarice and redemption Read more >
I have questions. Now that Thomas Pynchon’s archives have a home—at Los Angeles’s Huntington Library—will we finally be given access to how he comes up with the names for his characters? Look, whatever you think of Pynchon as a novelist—and Read more >
This week, the eight-bedroom, six-bathroom Cotswold mansion where Evelyn Waugh wrote Brideshead Revisited sold to an unnamed bidder in an online auction for £3.16m, after its previous owner, Jason Blain, defaulted on a loan against the property. That’s despite the fact that Read more >
Lit Hub is excited to share the cover of Amy Brady’s debut book, ICE: From Mixed Drinks to Skating Rinks—A Cool History of a Hot Commodity, out from Putnam in June 2023. Ice is a captivating cultural history that examines Read more >
Literary Hub is pleased to reveal the cover for Edan Lepucki’s Time’s Mouth forthcoming from Counterpoint in August 2023. From the bestselling author of California, comes this “enthralling saga about family secrets that grow more powerful with time, set against the magical, Read more >
In 1982, Scott Rice, an English professor at San Jose State University, founded the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest—in which entrants are challenged “to write an atrocious opening sentence to the worst novel never written”—named, of course, after Edward Bulwer-Lytton, best known Read more >
Literary Hub is pleased to announce the winner of the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, which each year awards $10,000 and publication to a first-time, first-generation immigrant author, alternating yearly between fiction and nonfiction. The 2022 fiction prize Read more >
What the hell are we doing? All the best things are shutting down and people are out here using computers to make children’s books? Not to get too Jeff Goldblum on you, but just because you build a tool to Read more >
