Anne Bradstreet (1612-72) holds a special place in American literature, and has a notable claim to fame. Her life as one of the first immigrants to the New World in the 1630s helped to inform the poetry she wrote, which often deals with everyday themes: family life, her marriage and her children, and the various
Literature
January 18, 2023, 10:00am Literary Hub is pleased to reveal the cover for Nishanth Injam’s debut short story collection, The Best Possible Experience, which Pantheon calls an “astonishingly assured debut from an award-winning writer, an emotionally rich portrait of contemporary India and its diaspora and a yearning rendering of the people and places we call home.”
January 17, 2023, 4:56am Featuring new books by Tsitsi Dangarembga, De’Shawn Charles Winslow, and Monica Heisey, as well as Bret Easton Ellis and Anne Waldman (big week for Bennington alums!). Happy browsing! * Bret Easton Ellis, The Shards(Knopf) “Sometimes horrifying, sometimes nostalgic and even poignant, Ellis’s latest is an unqualified success.”–Booklist Marisa Crane, I Keep
‘Phenomenal Woman’ is a 1994 poem by the American poet Maya Angelou (1928-2014). Angelou was a singer, dancer, composer, actor, teacher, memoirist, and poet: a woman of many talents. She was also a key voice in the American civil rights movement. Much of her work is about striving to succeed, even in the face of
January 17, 2023, 11:00am Other than working with writers to publish great books, the thing I was most looking forward to in creating Roxane Gay Books, was covers. For the first two titles, I commissioned Rodrigo Corral who has such a unique and bold vision for the book covers he designs. His work is regularly
It was 1963, and Karen Stamm was unmarried, pregnant, eighteen years old, and eager for an abortion. A bright woman from a lower-middle-class family, she was finishing her education and in no way interested in having a child. Her home state of New York had treated abortion as a crime since the early nineteenth century.
‘The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas’ is a 1973 short story by the American writer Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2018). A powerful tale which its author described as a ‘psychomyth’, this story explores some weighty and important themes over the course of its eight pages. Below, we explore some of the most prominent themes
Host Jo Reed spoke with author Brad Meltzer and Golden Voice narrator Scott Brick about their longtime collaboration, and about Meltzer’s new nonfiction audiobook, The Nazi Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill, out now. Both truly appreciate the other’s work—listen to their conversation about their many years of working together on
I can’t promise that you will find the documentary Turn Every Page as delightful as I did. Most of its nearly two hours are occupied with traditional sit-down interviews, and most of those alternate between the same two men, both privileged New Yorkers, one of whom is in his late eighties and the other in
‘Ocean Eyes’ is a well-known song by Billie Eilish. However, this lyric isn’t a self-penned composition, unlike many of Eilish’s other hits. Instead, it was actually composed by her brother, Finneas O’Connell, who wrote it for his band, The Slightlys. But he let Eilish record a version of it, and it has become world-famous as
The following first appeared in Lit Hub’s The Craft of Writing newsletter—sign up here. * When I sit down in order to write, sometimes it’s there; sometimes it’s not. But that doesn’t bother me anymore. I tell my students there is such a thing as “writer’s block,” and they should respect it. You shouldn’t write through it. It’s blocked because
One friend managed to tile a Moroccan backsplash in her Brooklyn kitchen during her maternity leave; another wrote a book. So when my sister, an artist, asked me how much work was “realistic” to get done with a newborn at her feet, I told her the truth: My 12 weeks of US leave were a
‘The Tyger’ is not only one of the best-known poems of the poet and engraver William Blake (1757-1827): it is only of the best-known and best-loved poems in the English language. Part of the power of Blake’s paean to the terrible beauty of the tiger is the insistent trochaic rhythm of the lines, with their
TODAY: In 1977, Anais Nïn dies at 73. Buckle in for our 217 (!) most anticipated books of 2023. | Lit Hub “It’s a real moment of maturation to say, ‘My time here is short—what can I do the most beautifully?’” George Saunders talks about his first love, songwriting (and why he gave it up).
January 13, 2023, 10:28am Huh, apparently we have Florence Pugh to thank for John le Carré’s last book, Agent Running in the Field (are we just running out of spy thriller titles at this point?). As Pugh told writer Chloe Schama in a recent Vogue cover profile, the two had dinner while Pugh was working
Cheer dad! The incredible lessons from this middle-aged man learned coaching a team of tween girls. When Patrick first became a “boy cheer coach” a few years back, he had no idea what was in store for him. He had agreed simply because his daughter asked him to. Once the deal was done, there was
‘The Swimmer’ (1964) is John Cheever’s best-known story. This tale, which fuses realist and surrealist elements, is about a middle-aged married man who decides to travel home from his friends’ house one summer afternoon, swimming in the various swimming pools he encounters on his route. Notable themes of Cheever’s story include memory, relationships, American suburban
TODAY: In 1898. novelist Emile Zola’s “J’accuse,” a defense of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a French Jew falsely convicted of treason, was published in the Paris newspaper L’Aurore. The Lying Life of Adults, Dune: Part Two, The Color Purple, and more of the literary film and TV premiering in 2023. | Lit Hub Film & TV