The Hub

News, Notes, Talk

Here are the winners of the 2022 Kirkus Prize.

In a ceremony on Thursday at the Austin Central Library, Kirkus Reviews announced the three winners of their ninth annual Kirkus Prize in Fiction, Nonfiction and Young Readers’ Literature. The winners were chosen from the 1,436 books that received the Read more >

By Emily Temple

Why did no one warn Matthew Perry that Keanu Reeves is universally beloved?

By now, perhaps you’re aware of the kerfuffle over the two (2) separate instances in Matthew Perry’s forthcoming memoir, Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, in which he takes extremely cheap shots at Keanu Reeves in the context of Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

Where the Wild Things Bone: Stephen Colbert mocks Republicans’ moral panic.

We’ve been covering the rising, almost biblical, flood of Republican censorship for a while now, but with midterm debate season in full-swing, all of the crazy is going mainstream. On his show last night Stephen Colbert took aim at the Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

Cover reveal: See the cover for Jane Wong's Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City.

Literary Hub is pleased to reveal the cover for Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City, the debut memoir by Kundiman fellow Jane Wong, which will be published by Tin House this spring. Here’s how the publisher describes the novel: In Read more >

By Literary Hub

Cover reveal: See the cover for Michael Chang's Synthetic Jungle.

Literary Hub is pleased to reveal the cover for Michael Chang’s Synthetic Jungle: Poems, their latest poetry collection forthcoming from Curbstone Books. Chang’s poetry has been nominated for Best New Poets, Best of the Net, and the Pushcart Prize. In Read more >

By Eloise King-Clements

Toni Morrison will finally be on a U.S. stamp in 2023.

This week, the United States Postal Service announced their 2023 slate of stamps, including new forever stamps honoring literary legends Toni Morrison and Ernest J. Gaines. (Morrison has been immortalized on stamps before, but it’s USPS policy that living people Read more >

By Emily Temple

Listen to Phoebe Bridgers and Andrew Bird “reimagine” Emily Dickinson.

Andrew Bird has recorded a collaboration with Phoebe Bridgers billed as a “reimagination” of the Emily Dickinson poem “I felt a Funeral in my Brain.” According to Bird (whose latest album, Inside Problems, was released this past summer): I came Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

Turns out there's an actual Frankenstein Castle in Germany—complete with legendary mad scientist.

Today I learned that not only is there a real Frankenstein Castle (in Mühltal, Germany), but that is was the birthplace of a 17th century alchemist named Johann Konrad Dipple, who was obsessed with finding the secret to immortality and Read more >

By Emily Temple

What you should read next, based on your favorite Midnights song.

It’s rare in this day and age that you know exactly what everyone is doing at a given moment. In the olden days, before streaming services, you could pretty much guarantee that your colleagues and friends were all gathered around Read more >

By Katie Yee

Japanese bookstores are closing at a much faster rate than here in America.

As reported in the Japanese Times (with a headline worthy of Murakami), bookstores have been closing at an alarming rate in Japan over the last decade. According to an industry organization, there are currently 11,952 stores operating in Japan, compared Read more >

By Jonny Diamond

Publishing professionals are calling for PRH to reconsider Amy Coney Barrett's book.

The Big Five publishers have a history of both publishing and distributing books by people who not only hold abhorrent beliefs, but who wield those beliefs to destroy the rights of people across the world—so it’s no surprise that Sentinel, Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

16 new releases to support your out-of-control book-buying habit.

Nothing like new releases to see you through the work week. Maybe the cure for burnout isn’t buying more books—an act which inherently gives you more to do in the end. But here we find ourselves!! Ross Gay, Cormac McCarthy, Read more >

By Katie Yee

Khadija Abdalla Bajabar has won the Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction.

Khadija Abdalla Bajabar’s The House of Rust has won the inaugural Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction, Ursula K. Le Guin Literary Trust and Graywolf Press announced on Friday. The prize comes with an award of $25,000 for the Read more >

By Corinne Segal

Salman Rushdie has lost vision in one eye and the use of his hand.

Just over two months after he was brutally attacked onstage while speaking at the Chautauqua Institution, Salman Rushdie’s agent, Andrew Wylie, provided an update on the author’s condition. In an interview with El País, Wylie said, “[His wounds] were profound, Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

Wait, Colleen Hoover's new book sold how many copies by the end of its release day?

If the New York Times Best-Seller List were a Monopoly game, Colleen Hoover would have hotels on Boardwalk and Park Place and you’d definitely be paying her every time you hopped on a railroad. Please forgive the tortured metaphor, but there Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

George Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London is coming straight to your inbox.

Some good news to ring in the weekend: fans of George Orwell (and fans in the making) will soon be able to enjoy a serialization of his works, courtesy of Orwell Daily, a project to bring his writing to new Read more >

By Corinne Segal

See the gorgeous 18th century tarot deck used by the first professional tarot reader.

In 1789 Paris, a certain M. Etteilla (a pseudonym of the French occultist Jean-Baptiste Alliette) applied for a patent to print Livre de Thot. Not that kind of thot, mind you—it refers to the Egyptian god Thoth, though I also Read more >

By Emily Temple

Cover reveal: See the cover for Luis Alberto Urrea's Good Night, Irene.

Literary Hub is pleased to reveal the cover for Luis Alberto Urrea’s Good Night, Irene, the latest novel from the bestselling novelist and Pulitzer Prize and NBCC finalist, which will be published by Little, Brown, this spring. Here’s how the Read more >

By Literary Hub

Nightmare fuel: Lana Del Rey says her un-backed-up book manuscript was stolen from her car.

As someone who has more than once lost significant chunks of writing projects because of my long-standing allergy to backing up my work, I have great empathy for Lana Del Rey, who announced on her Instagram Stories that someone had Read more >

By Jessie Gaynor

Minister of Sick Burns: Keir Starmer openly mocks forthcoming Liz Truss biography.

Liz Truss has resigned as Prime Minister of the UK, making her 44-day tenure the shortest in the country’s history. This non-shocking announcement comes on the same day the co-author of a forthcoming biography of Truss tweeted about his book’s Read more >

By Jonny Diamond