The Hub

News, Notes, Talk

Let the opinions commence: You can now read the whole White Noise screenplay.

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 >

By Eliza Smith

Charles Dickens partied HARD after finishing A Christmas Carol in just six weeks.

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 >

By Jonny Diamond

Thomas Pynchon’s archives have a home (Oedipa Maas and Zipi Pisk can finally relax)

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 >

By Jonny Diamond

Evelyn Waugh's mansion just sold for £3m, but the "superfans" living there refuse to leave.

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 >

By Emily Temple

Exclusive Cover Reveal: Ice: A Cool History of a Hot Commodity.

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 >

By Literary Hub

Exclusive cover reveal: Here's the cover for Edan Lepucki's Time's Mouth

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 >

By Literary Hub

This year's very worst opening sentence is about salami and lingerie.

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 >

By Emily Temple

Announcing the winner of the 2022 Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing.

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 >

By Literary Hub

Internet man uses AI to create a children’s book in praise of AI and it is fatuous and ugly.

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 >

By Jonny Diamond

Trump is publishing a book of some letters famous people sent him.

In general, I have zero interest in content by and about Trump or his administration, but the latest money grab disguised as a book caught my attention because of the high potential for celebrities being extremely embarrassed. According to CNN, Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

5 new books to find at your local bookstore.

What’re you waiting for? Five perfect reasons to stop by your favorite indie today. * Jamie Marina Lau, Gunk Baby (Astra House) “Lau delivers an astute narrative … an exposé of and warning to a society on the verge of Read more >

By Katie Yee

Markus Dohle is resigning from Penguin Random House.

Yes, it’s true, Markus Dohle is leaving his position as CEO of Penguin Random House, in what is clear fallout from the failed attempt to acquire Simon & Schuster. Dohle, who pushed hard for the attempted merger, said in his Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

Libraries are not interested in hosting readings of Kirk Cameron's "faith-centered" kids' book.

Amid all the stories of shitbag Proud Boys shutting down drag queen story hours at libraries, here’s a nice bit of news about libraries saying a very polite “fuck off” to Kirk Cameron, former Growing Pains star and current Christian film Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

Turns out the Russian soldier who fled to France and sold his war memoir might be full of shit.

Back in August I wrote about Pavel Filatyev, an active-duty Russian soldier who posted online his 141-page account of the lead up to and taking of Kherson by Russian forces. With the help of Vladimir Osechkin, who runs Gulagu.net (an Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

The NBCC has announced the inaugural longlist for its new Barrios Book in Translation Prize.

Today, the National Book Critics Circle announced the inaugural longlist for its Barrios Book in Translation Prize, a new annual prize that “celebrates the artistic merit of literature in translation in any genre and seeks to recognize the valuable work Read more >

By Emily Temple

Exclusive cover reveal: Here's the cover for Elysha Chang's A Quitter’s Paradise.

Literary Hub is pleased to reveal the cover for Elysha Chang’s A Quitter’s Paradise, the first book on Sarah Jessica Parker’s imprint at Zando, forthcoming in June 2023. This debut novel examines the grief of a young woman desperate to Read more >

By Eloise King-Clements

This previously unpublished CD Wright poem is filled with beauty and sadness.

I didn’t know I needed it this morning, but here is a previously unpublished poem by the late and truly great CD Wright (gone too soon). The poem, called “Abandon Yourself to That Which is Inevitable,” appears in the Spring Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

On this day in literary history, Anthony Trollope died of the giggles. (For real.)

Let this be a warning to any and all holiday revelers, particularly those standing near my window while I’m desperately hoping the baby stays asleep: turns out you can laugh yourself to death. And let this be a warning to Read more >

By Emily Temple

17 new books to invigorate your December reading.

At the beginning of every month, I make a silly little pile of books that I’m hoping to read in the next 30-ish days. Inevitably, the pile is always like 20 books tall and I only end up reading a Read more >

By Katie Yee

We did it!! “Goblin mode” is Oxford's Word of the Year.

A few weeks ago, the Oxford English Dictionary people did something unprecedented: they let the public vote on the Word of the Year. The finalists were: #IStandWith, metaverse, and goblin mode. As you may recall, Lit Hub stood firmly behind Read more >

By Katie Yee