The Hub

News, Notes, Talk

What do we think about Maya Hawke as Flannery O'Connor?

Director Ethan Hawke is currently working on post-production for Wildcat, an upcoming Flannery O’Connor biopic starring his daughter, actor Maya Hawke—a fact I was unaware of until just now, seeing the above photo of Maya as the singular Georgian fiction Read more >

By Janet Manley

The Academy of American Poets has announced its 2023 Poet Laureate Fellows.

Today, the Academy of American Poets announced its 2023 Poet Laureate Fellows, twenty-three poets who “serve as poets laureate of states, counties, and cities across the United States and will be leading public poetry programs in their respective communities in Read more >

By Emily Temple

21 new books out today!

It’s nearly the end of July, and that means that if you haven’t already gotten to enjoy the special pleasure of reading a book outside in pleasant weather (that is, if you’ve had the luck to experience pleasant weather amidst Read more >

By Gabrielle Bellot

Read an 1890 review of The Picture of Dorian Gray.

These days, if you use your book review to call an author a pervert and instruct him to abandon writing for the sake of public morality, most reputable editors will palm you a paltry kill fee and mothball your screed. Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

An annotated copy of Virginia Woolf's difficult debut novel shows her evolution in action.

Virginia Woolf’s first novel, The Voyage Out, was published in the UK in 1915, after which she wanted to tweak some passages for the printing of the US edition. We know this thanks to the work of unsung hero Simon Read more >

By Janet Manley

What are the books Ken checks out of the library in Barbie? They're book.

When Ken (Ryan Gosling) leaves Barbieland in the movie Barbie, he finds that he is not at all prepared for what he’ll find in The Real World, where men rule all. So, the character, whose main concern in life has Read more >

By Janet Manley

Read the first reviews of every Cormac McCarthy novel.

Do you like this sentence?: How surely are the dead beyond death. Death is what the living carry with them. A state of dread, like some uncanny foretaste of a bitter memory. But the dead do not remember and nothingness Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

American Psycho" thriller has arrived.">

American Psycho" thriller has arrived.">The age of the "Feminist American Psycho" thriller has arrived.

Are they battling patriarchy, or are they the symptoms of it? Is the serial killer a rebel, or the new pick me girl? That’s the tension that drives a wave of new thrillers. The lack of women serial killers in American Psycho" thriller has arrived.">Read more >

By Molly Odintz

Exclusive: See the cover for Lisa Ko's latest novel, Memory Piece.

Literary Hub is pleased to reveal the cover for Memory Piece, the latest novel from Lisa Ko, author of The Leavers, which will be published by Riverhead Books in March 2024. Here’s a bit about the book from the publisher: In the Read more >

By Literary Hub

The Banned Book Club is an e-reader app that can get you over the firewall.

To get from one side of the U.S. to the other is to criss-cross a veritable snakes and ladders of state and county-level legislation and policy. If you’re after a particular title by Toni Morrison or Margaret Atwood, you might Read more >

By Janet Manley

Yes, it can be very stressful to publish a book, and young writers need more support.

An April report by the UK-based publishing site, The Bookseller, showed that more than half of the debut authors they surveyed said the experience of publishing a book adversely affected their mental health. Further reporting from The Guardian reveals that Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

A researcher found an old medieval manuscript and it's pretty funny.

All hail the best new bard of the Middle Ages, one Richard Heege (or possibly Heeg), whose long-overlooked 15th century manuscript captures on paper the stories told by a bawdy minstrel at some drunken revelry hundreds of years ago in Read more >

By Janet Manley

See the cover for Sloane Crosley's new memoir, Grief is for People.

Literary Hub is pleased to reveal the cover for Grief is for People, a first memoir from the sharp-eyed essayist and novelist Sloane Crosley, which will be published by MCD/FSG on February 27, 2024. Here’s a bit about the book from Read more >

By Nicole Kugel

Can you guess these famous writers by their childhood nicknames?

Famous writers: they’re just like us. At least in the sense that they too were children once. And some of them even endured the ritual of a childhood nickname, whether cruel or adoring or somewhere in between. But can you Read more >

By Emily Temple

The WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes mean it is time to rewatch that Ethan Hawke video.

In just the past week: Union president Fran Drescher announced that SAG-AFTRA would strike after negotiations with the American Motion Picture and Television Production association broke down, in a barn burner of a speech. (“How far apart we are on Read more >

By Janet Manley

24 new books out today.

It’s the middle of July, and, almost no matter where you might be reading this from, you may have experienced some unusual weather recently, from record-breaking heatwaves to apocalyptic wildfire haze to frightening flooding. This has been a scary time Read more >

By Gabrielle Bellot