The Hub

News, Notes, Talk

25 new books out today!

It’s the 27th, which means that June, joltingly, is nearing its end. But with a new week comes a new slew of exciting fiction, nonfiction, and poetry (and, just as excitingly, books that bend the borders of genre). Below, you’ll Read more >

By Gabrielle Bellot

The oldest book in the world is about taxing beer.

A new “oldest book in the world” has been discovered! And it’s about tax records pertaining to beer and olive oil. Researchers at Special Collections at Graz University Library recently… …came across an Egyptian papyrus from the 3rd century BC Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

Harry and Meghan are looking to tap Dickens for their next content outing.

The production company Archewell, run by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Prince Harry and Meghan, is apparently in talks with Netflix over a scripted show Bad Manners, centered on Miss Havisham pre-Great Expectations, when she was just a difficult Read more >

By Janet Manley

Haruki Murakami is asking developers not to destroy the place where he decided to become a writer.

Haruki Murakami famously became a writer at a baseball game. It was April 1978, the Yakult Swallows against the Hiroshima Carp at Tokyo’s Jingu Stadium. “I think Hiroshima’s starting pitcher that day was Yoshiro Sotokoba,” Murakami wrote. Yakult countered with Read more >

By Emily Temple

Here are the winners of the 2023 Firecracker Awards.

The winners of its ninth annual Firecracker Awards were announced by the The Community of Literary Magazines & Presses in a virtual ceremony on June 22nd, and some of the year’s most talked-about titles were on the list. Each winner Read more >

By Janet Manley

Read a classic review of Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower.

The child in each of us  Knows paradise. Paradise is home. Home as it was  Or home as it should have been. Paradise is one’s own place, One’s own people, One’s own world, Knowing and known, Perhaps even  Loving and Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

Fabio (yes, Fabio) thinks the portrayal of men in modern romance novels is "hogwash."

Oh dear. Earlier this month, Publishers Weekly reported on romance readers’ increased appetite for books with “cinnamon rolls” and “golden retrievers” as their leading men—categories that are exactly what they sound like: “sweet, supportive, and kind” (CR) and possessed of Read more >

By Emily Temple

A rare Maurice Sendak story will be published next year.

Almost 60 years after the publication of Where The Wild Things Are (November 23 will mark the rumpus), the world is getting a new children’s book from the late Maurice Sendak. HarperCollins Publishers will be releasing Ten Little Rabbits: A Read more >

By Janet Manley

The Nation is bringing back Bookforum, baby.

One Hero died defiled, but [Bookforum does] live! It was announced today in concert with Artforum that The Nation would relaunch shuttered institution Bookforum this August with a triumphant Summer 2023 issue (you can subscribe here). Per The Nation’s press Read more >

By Janet Manley

The Academy of American Poets has named its first Latino president.

“I believe, to quote the Salvadoran poet Roque Dalton, ‘that poetry, like bread, is for everyone.’” So begins the reign of Ricardo Maldonado at the Academy of American Poets, announced on Wednesday to be its new president and executive director—the Read more >

By Janet Manley

Here is the 2023 Miles Franklin award shortlist.

Six authors have been named to the shortlist for the 2023 Miles Franklin award, Australia’s top literary gong, with a AU$60,000 prize being dangled for the eventual winner. The shortlist is: Jessica Au, Cold Enough for Snow Robbie Arnott, Limberlost Read more >

By Janet Manley

23 new books to check out today!

Somehow, it is the 20th of June; I find myself amazed that we’re here already, that so much time has quickly and quietly rushed by. What is equally amazing—and far less funereal—is that there are so many fascinating new books Read more >

By Gabrielle Bellot

Read a 1922 review of James Joyce's Ulysses.

History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.   Happy Bloomsday to all who celebrate! Did you know that iconic mid-century American literary critic/Nabokov frenemy No. 1 Edmund Wilson reviewed James Joyce’s Ulysses upon its publication Read more >

By Dan Sheehan

I'm obsessed with these hand-stitched recreations of classic composition notebooks.

This week, PRINT Magazine introduced me to the work of Candace Hicks, a Nacogdoches, Texas-based artist who makes, among other things, gorgeous and beguiling cloth recreations of classic composition notebooks, complete with embroidered text on functional pages. “Sewing every line, Read more >

By Emily Temple

Happy Bloomsday! Turn off your wifi and read some Joyce.

Welcome to a new century of Bloomsdays (long may they run). As James Joyce’s masterpiece, Ulysses, turns 101, let us take a moment to honor one of the great works of literature ever produced, set on this day in Dublin, Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

Zain Khalid has won the 2023 Young Lions Award.

The 23rd Young Lions Fiction Award, handed out by the New York Public Library to a novel or collection of short stories, went to Brothers Alive author Zain Khalid at a June 15th ceremony. The $10,000 award recognizes a writer Read more >

By Janet Manley