By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.’ This famous biblical quotation is found in the Gospels, in Matthew 19:24, Mark 10:25, and Luke 18:25. Jesus speaks these words, but in
Literature
TODAY: In 1983, Ezra Jack Keats, author and illustrator of The Snowy Day, dies at 67. Helen Oyeyemi on the rebel vocabulary of Ágota Kristóf: “If the likes of Kristóf and her kin have anything to do with it, we shall never feel that we’ve finished learning to read.” | Lit Hub Criticism Herb Harris
May 5, 2023, 10:00am According to the powers that be (er, apparently according to Dan Wickett of the Emerging Writers Network), May is Short Story Month. To celebrate, the Literary Hub staff will be recommending a single short story, free to read online, every (work) day of the month. Why not read along with us? Today, we recommend: “Paper
How did hyacinths, the popular flowers, get their name? And what have they to do with homoerotic love, wind, discuses, and Greek mythology? As ever, we’re here to answer these questions, by taking a closer look at the classical myth of Hyacinth and how he came to give his name to the flowers. Before we
May 5, 2023, 10:30am On Monday, at around 3PM (EST), from Columbia University in New York City, the winner of this year’s Pulitzer Prize for Fiction will be announced. As well as a check for a cool $15,000 dollars (which feels a little low, tbh), the victor (if there is to be one; see 2012)
May 4, 2023, 10:00am According to the powers that be (er, apparently according to Dan Wickett of the Emerging Writers Network), May is Short Story Month. To celebrate, the Literary Hub staff will be recommending a single short story, free to read online, every (work) day of the month. Why not read along with us? Today, we
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘At the ’Cadian Ball’ is an 1892 short story by the American writer Kate Chopin (1850-1904). The story is about two men and two women and their romantic involvements leading up to, during, and after the event known as the ’Cadian Ball, a social occasion at which young Cajun
May 4, 2023, 11:21am Respect and support to Wasilla, Alaska’s Black Birch Books, who’re getting a lot of online flack for announcing a drag story time in June. But despite a slew of negative, and sometimes threatening, comments and reviews, Black Birch owner Taylor Jordan is going on with the show. As she told Alaska
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘A pair of star-cross’d lovers’ is a well-known phrase from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. The Prologue’s description of Romeo and Juliet as ‘star-cross’d lovers’ has become one of the most emblematic phrases from the whole play, neatly encapsulating the doomed nature of their love affair from the outset. But
May 3, 2023, 9:47am I love this. Legendary UK publisher Faber Editions has reissued Sven Holm’s 1967 dystopian classic, Termush, which is set at “a luxury hotel at the end of the world.” So why not set up a fake hotel website that looks real until you start reading the fine print? I, a philistine,
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘Big Yellow Taxi’ is probably Joni Mitchell’s best-known song. In many ways a song about not taking things for granted until it’s too late and we’ve lost them, it’s also an example of an environmental protest song. Mitchell wrote the song in 1970. ‘Big Yellow Taxi’: meaning The song
May 3, 2023, 10:00am According to the powers that be (er, apparently according to Dan Wickett of the Emerging Writers Network), May is Short Story Month. To celebrate, the Literary Hub staff will be recommending a single short story, free to read online, every (work) day of the month. Why not read along with us? Today, we
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) Many notable short stories focus on the rough passage from childhood to adulthood. Of course, the transition from ‘child’ to ‘adult’ does not happen overnight, and is not the result of a single epiphany of crucial moment, but writers of short fiction often distil the development from innocence to
May 2, 2023, 10:00am According to the powers that be (er, apparently according to Dan Wickett of the Emerging Writers Network), May is Short Story Month. To celebrate, the Literary Hub staff will be recommending a single short story, free to read online, every (work) day of the month. Why not read along with us? Today, we
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) The word stanza is derived from Italian: it literally means ‘room’, or ‘place for stopping or standing’. This Italian word was co-opted into English, and is now used to describe the arrangement of verse lines into a particular pattern, depending on how many lines there are and how they
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) The fourth and last of the gospels which begin the New Testament, the Gospel of John is also the most unusual of the four. Whilst the other three gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke contain many overlapping details (and are known collectively, on account of these similarities, as the
May 2, 2023, 11:48am The 2023 Tony nominations are out and include the Jessica Chastain revival of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House (also with Succession’s Arian Moayed), and your old friend Tom Stoppard. The nominations for best new play are: Ain’t No Mo’ by Jordan E. Cooper, about a world in which the U.S. government
May 2, 2023, 1:25pm Does Taika Waititi ever sleep? It seems like every other week brings news that the Oscar-winning New Zealander has attached himself to another Hollywood project. Time Bandits, Interior Chinatown, The Incal, Thor 6: OMGods, some Glup Shitto Star Wars nonsense…the list goes on. How does this man find the time, or the energy,