The Hub

News, Notes, Talk

Lin-Manuel Miranda's next musical is an adaptation of The Warriors.

Waaaaariorrrrrs! Come out to play-ayyyyy! Everybody might be packed, but it’s hard to imagine how it would be possible to improve on Walter Hill’s 1979 cult classic The Warriors, based on the novel of the same name by Sol Yurick, which Read more >

By Emily Temple

Florida public schools have "effectively banned" AP Psychology.

Today’s news from the front lines of Florida’s war on kids: The state has “effectively banned” Advanced Placement Psychology because its anti-LGBTQ law forbids the course’s material on gender and sexuality. Because the College Board quite reasonably refuses to excise Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

“You must change your life.” The Sealey Challenge can help.

The quote in the above headline is part of the last line of Rainer Maria Rilke’s famous sonnet, “Archaic Torso of Apollo,” as translated by Stephen Mitchell. It’s a haunting line, among the most recognizable second person directives in all Read more >

By Tyler Meier

Exclusive: See the cover for Uche Okonkwo's A Kind of Madness.

Literary Hub is pleased to reveal the cover for Uche Okonkwo’s debut short story collection A Kind of Madness, which Tin House will publish in April 2024. Here’s a bit more about the book from the publisher: Set in contemporary Read more >

By Literary Hub

Read the first reviews of every James Baldwin novel.

James Baldwin is widely considered to be one of the finest writers and public intellectuals this country has ever produced. A brilliant novelist, essayist, and social critic, his explorations of homosexuality, racism, and class struggle in America have had a Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

A book for every Barbie in Barbie.

Hi Barbie! Are you looking for a good book to read? Maybe to take to the Beach? And/or to bring with you when you go to the movies this weekend? I promise, it’s going to be right up your alley. Read more >

By Emily Temple

Dashing! You can now get Jane Austen's wallpaper in book and wallpaper form.

Maybe you can’t marry someone with 5,000 a year and his own castle, but you can own a new edition of Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, or Emma with a cover designed for the original wallpaper in Jane Austen’s Read more >

By Janet Manley

Exclusive: See the cover for Téa Obreht's next novel, The Morningside.

Literary Hub is pleased to reveal the cover for The Morningside, the third novel by bestselling, award-winning writer Téa Obreht, which will be published by Random House in March. Here’s a little bit more about the book from the publisher: Read more >

By Literary Hub

Here is the 2023 Booker Prize longlist!

The freshly announced “Booker’s dozen” of titles longlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize is making its way around the literary internet, so let’s see what the morning tides have brought in. There are four debut novelists on the list, and Read more >

By Janet Manley

Guadalupe Nettel has won the El Grand Balam award for 2024-2026.

Mexican author Guadalupe Nettel has been named as the latest recipient of the prestigious El Grand Balam award, a $150,000 prize awarded in three annual tranches and intended to support mid-career writers. The award, sometimes referred to as the “Borchard Read more >

By Janet Manley

27 new books out today!

It’s officially August, and, because it’s also officially Tuesday, that means that there’s a myriad of intriguing new books out today. As many of us continue to face sweltering heat, I hope you’ll be able to curl up somewhere shaded Read more >

By Gabrielle Bellot

Read the first reviews of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince.

Today marks the 79th anniversary of the disappearance of French writer, journalist, and aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. On July 31, 1944, Saint-Exupéry took off in an unarmed P-38 on his ninth reconnaissance mission for the Free French Air Force from an airbase Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

A new poll has found that we read to ~escape~ ... to World War II.

There’s no escape hatch from the current climate-deranged heat dome we live in quite like a goooooood fantasy novel or historical romp through the killing fields, a new ThriftBooks and OnePoll survey of 2,000 Americans has found. ThriftBooks asked respondents Read more >

By Janet Manley

Exclusive: See the cover for Rachel Khong's new novel, Real Americans.

Literary Hub is pleased to reveal the cover for Rachel Khong’s Real Americans, “an exhilarating novel of American identity that spans three generations in one family,” which will be published by Knopf on April 30, 2024. Here’s a bit more Read more >

By Nicole Kugel

A brief cultural history of crying while reading.

In the olden days, the popular crowd were devouring Pamela, and watching Marianne Dashwood getting teary over a sonnet (sense before sensibility)—the beginning of what became known as the “sentimental” novel, especially popular for and by among females in the Read more >

By Janet Manley

Read W. H. Auden's 1954 review of The Fellowship of the Ring.

Sixty-nine (nice, but in Elvish) years ago this week, the godfather of high fantasy, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, published the first novel in a proposed three-volume epic “largely concerned with hobbits.” The Fellowship of the Ring has, in the decades since Read more >

By Dan Sheehan