Literature

‘A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings’ is a 1968 short story by the Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez (1927-2014). Like much of his fiction, this story is an example of magic realism (which we’ll say more about below). Subtitled ‘A Tale for Children’, ‘A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings’ is about an elderly

January 30, 2023, 11:53am Today I learned that Channing Tatum is writing a “fun and sexy” romance novel with Roxane Gay. And you know what, that is fun and sexy! Yep—Tatum is expanding from children’s books (and this) into something a little more grown-up. “She has almost a roughed-out outline of a story that we

‘Where the Sidewalk Ends’ is probably the best-known poem by Shel Silverstein. A popular poem for children, it was first published in 1974. The poem describes a hidden other world which lies between the sidewalk and the street: a world which children know how to find, where things are somewhat different from our world. You

January 30, 2023, 1:44pm Yesterday, the American Library Association announced the winners of the 2023 Carnegie Medals for Excellence. In fiction, the winner was Julie Otsuka for her most recent novel, The Swimmers. This brilliant book starts out at a community pool; it invites us into the rhythms of its inhabitants, lulls us into their routines—and

Shelf Talkers is a series at Lit Hub where booksellers from independent bookstores around the country share their favorite reads of the moment. Here are recommendations from the staff at Left Bank Books in St. Louis, MO. * Adina Talve-Goodman, Your Hearts, Your Scars This spare, posthumous collection of gorgeous essays about life before and

‘Fish Cheeks’ is a short autobiographical narrative by the American writer Amy Tan (born 1952). Tan is probably best-known for The Joy Luck Club, her 1989 novel containing a series of interwoven short stories told by a number of Chinese-American women who are members of the titular club; but ‘Fish Cheeks’ was published two years

TODAY: In 1940, Isaac Babel is executed by the NKVD.   Also on Lit Hub: What the booksellers are reading at Left Bank Books • Peter Turchi on the power of the literary aside • Read from (and listen to) Aleksandar Hemon’s latest novel, The World and All That It Holds

January 27, 2023, 10:09am Lovers of gorgeous prose and ghost-soaked literary fiction rejoice: two-time National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward’s next novel officially has a release date. Let Us Descend, Ward’s first novel in five years (since 2017’s Sing, Unburied Sing) will be published by Scribner on October 3. The publisher has described the novel as

‘We Wear the Mask’ is a poem by the African-American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906), written in 1895 and included in Dunbar’s 1896 collection Majors and Minors. In the poem, Dunbar writes about the fact that many members of a marginalised community (which can be tacitly understood to mean the Black community in this context)

TODAY: In 1873, Colette is born. How Edith Wharton foresaw the 21st century: “The scandals documented in Wharton’s narratives serve as harbingers of the sensations that flash across our hand-held screens.” | Lit Hub Biography Helen Betya Rubinstein wonders if the power inherent in copyediting causes more harm than good. | Lit Hub When Georges Lemaître, physicist, mathematician,

January 27, 2023, 10:18am The man largely responsible for one of the great rock anthems of the 1980s, “We’re Not Gonna Take It,” told an interviewer recently that he’s writing a novel about toxic masculinity. It’s called Frats, and as Dee Snider (who’s 67!) explained on the show Full Metal Jackie: “The novel is a

‘The Lady, or the Tiger?’ is a widely studied short story by the American writer Frank R. Stockton (1834-1902). This classic short story, which was first published in The Century magazine in 1882, began life as a story Stockton told at a party; he published it when it received a strong response from his friends.

January 27, 2023, 11:48am At a ceremony in New York on Thursday, Villa Albertine announced the winners of the first Albertine Translation Prize, which honors “the best contemporary French literature in English translation,” as selected by a committee of independent professional experts. “Together with the authors and publishers, [these translators] have created works of literature

TODAY: In 1938, Zitkala-Sa dies at 61.   Helen Betya Rubinstein asks if copyediting is worse than meaningless and actually causes harm. | Lit Hub Lauren Fleshman on the problem at the heart of women’s sports culture: “The message to me at 14 was that compliance, coachability, and even beauty might be more important than

‘My Papa’s Waltz’ is one of the most popular and most widely studied poems by the American poet Theodore Roethke (1908-63). In this poem, published in 1948, Roethke recalls dancing with his drunken father, remembering this childhood experience with mixed feelings. You can read ‘My Papa’s Waltz’ here – the poem takes around one minute

January 26, 2023, 9:54am On Wednesday, the 41st John Dos Passos Prize was awarded to Uruguayan American writer Carolina De Robertis (The President and the Frog; Cantoras; The Gods of Tango) by Longwood University. The Dos Passos Prize is the oldest literary award given by a Virginia college or university, and every year honors an “American writer

‘Two-Headed Calf’ is a short poem by the American poet Laura Gilpin (1950-2007). If Gilpin had written nothing else besides this nine-line poem she would be fondly remembered by many, because in this short piece she manages to pack as much powerful emotion as we find in many longer poems. The poem is about a

January 24, 2023, 3:33pm There’s nothing Hollywood loves more than existing IP—thus, the Oscars are historically adaptation-friendly. Last year, 50% of the Best Picture nominations were based on books and plays; in 2016, it was 63%. According to Adam Morgan at the Chicago Review of Books, on six separate occasions, 100% of the Best Picture nominees