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 >
Photo by Rye White. As we enter what’s basically the last serious working week for corporate publishing (for some, anyway), it’s important to note that as of now, HarperCollins has yet to meet with any of its 250 or so Read more >
I love the Milwaukee Public Library Instagram and you should too: somehow they’ve achieved the perfect mix of try-hard theater kid, unhinged meme lord, and zen boomer TikTok savant. Head over here to see for yourself, but below are a Read more >
Tonight, in a ceremony at the Windsor Ballrooms in Montreal, Tiya Miles was awarded the $75,000 Cundill History Prize, which recognizes the best history writing in English, for All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Read more >
On the occasion of the Center for Fiction Exhibition, Beowulf Sheehan reflects on his experience photographing Cormac McCarthy: Alone in my studio on July 22, 2014, I dial his number. Cormac McCarthy’s voice is gentle, our conversation congenial. We discuss Read more >
Unfold the blankets, brew some coffee, and get ready for another solid month of paperback releases. (Doubles as an ICYMI gift guide.) * Juhea Kim, Beasts of a Little Land (Ecco, December 6) “Everyone is extraordinary, a singular beast in Read more >
Things at Twitter are going just fine! Remember when master tunnel-builder, confirmed monkey-killer, and brand new owner of Twitter Elon Musk told us all he’d be “forming a content moderation council with widely diverse viewpoints…”? Well, apparently by “widely diverse Read more >
Countless Republican politicians—who have never read anything longer than a pamphlet about how despite what the Bible says, Jesus actually hated poor people—have published entire books. Still, there’s something especially grotesque about Ron DeSantis, governor of the state with the Read more >
Winter is coming, and we are not leaving our homes (but still want to attend book events)! * The Trauma of Caste: A Dalit-Feminist Led Celebration & Discussion December 1 @ 7:30pm EST To celebrate the publication of Thenmozhi Soundararajan’s Read more >
The Fall of Tess Gunty (I speak of Autumn, not ruination) continues apace with news that the Indiana author’s much-ballyhooed debut novel The Rabbit Hutch—the story of a group of residents of a low-income housing community in a fictional Indiana town Read more >
Time to get cozy with this perfect octet of new books. * Michael Kimmelman, The Intimate City: Walking New York (Penguin Press) “New York City comes alive in this scintillating collection of conversations between New York Times architecture critic Kimmelman Read more >
In case the barrage of Cyber Monday emails from every store you’ve ever patronized (or thought about patronizing, or accidentally landed on while searching for “normal pants”) on the internet has you on the verge of declaring a moratorium on Read more >
Ah yes, gaslighting. It’s been with us since time immemorial, but like plenty of other terrible things, it was particularly big this year. “The increase in dictionary lookups for gaslighting is striking,” says Peter Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster’s Editor at Large. “In our Read more >
In days of yore—that is, my childhood in the paper-mill town of Mexico, Maine—a labor strike looked like an ugly affair. Picketing men in steel-toed boots screamed themselves hoarse at every shift change, their righteous anger rising into a sky Read more >
New books, or, perfect companions that, when held directly in front of one’s face, might act as a conversational shield against certain family members this Thanksgiving. * Allie Rowbottom, Aesthetica (Soho Press) “Much will be made of how perfectly Aesthetica captures Read more >
Because we believe in democracy here at Lit Hub dot com, I felt it was particularly important that you all knew about this upcoming vote: Oxford English Dictionary’s Word of the Year. Yes, that’s right. YOU have a say. For Read more >
Seriously. They already have too many. They also have too many totes, “old book” candles, library card socks, custom bookmarks, LED book lights. Any number of these is basically too many, except the totes, which don’t count because usually they’re Read more >
Literary Hub is pleased to reveal the cover for Jenn Shapland’s Thin Skin, a collection of essays forthcoming from Pantheon Books in August 2023. This collection is Shapland’s latest since her debut memoir, My Autobiography of Carson McCullers, which was a Read more >
It’s not hard to be the less-shitty Musk sibling at this point, so I won’t bang the drum too hard for Tosca Musk and her streaming service Passionflix, which adapts romance novels and distributes them via its streaming platform. Still, Read more >
Bob Dylan has once again enraged his core fanbase by going electric. Well, to be more specific, his publisher, Simon & Schuster, got into hot water this weekend after hundreds of fans figured out their one-of-a-kind, hand-signed editions of Dylan’s Read more >
