Literature

Let’s begin our exploration of Churchill’s famous ‘fight them on the beaches’ speech with a few problematic statements: In June 1940, Winston Churchill gave a speech which roused and inspired the whole of Britain. He pledged to ‘fight on the beaches’ and never surrender. When he read the words out on the radio, his wartime

January 6, 2023, 12:02pm Because AI is apparently just like us, it seems to have romanticized the creative fields. So instead of, say, figuring out how to help me dispute denied insurance claims, it’s more interested in writing children’s books, getting into poetry, and now… narrating audiobooks. Yesterday, The Verge reported that Apple Books has

TODAY: In 1944, investigative journalist Ida Tarbell dies.     When imagination is an act of resistance: Michelle Nijhuis considers Sarah Polley’s new film adaptation of Women Talking. | Lit Hub Film & TV “Of all the trades in the world, there is only one that really suits me. That of eating, drinking, sleeping, playing, and

‘The Distances’ is a short story by the Argentinian writer Julio Cortázar (1914-84), published in his 1951 collection Bestiary. In the story, a woman discovers her ‘double’ while dreaming and then, in the real world, exchanges identities with this other woman. Like many of Julio Cortázar’s short stories, ‘The Distances’ is playful, dense, and difficult

‘Firework’ is one of Katy Perry’s best-known songs, and its lyrics were inspired by a classic work of literature, so we thought we’d consider Katy Perry’s song from a broadly ‘literary’ perspective. What is the meaning of the song’s lyrics? And which literary classic influenced the writing of those lyrics? ‘Firework’: song meaning The song’s

January 4, 2023, 12:03pm Today, the Robert B. Silvers Foundation announced the winners of their second annual Silvers-Dudley Prizes, which recognize “outstanding achievement in literary criticism, arts writing, and journalism.” The prizes, which carry a total value of $135,000, will award between $15,000 and $30,000 to six writers in three categories. “The Silvers Foundation is

TODAY: In 1920, Spanish novelist Benito Pérez Galdós dies.    Also on Lit Hub: Why I had to get older to write about youth • On translation and inherited trauma (or, what it means to truly inhabit an author’s work) • Read from Tom Crewe’s debut novel, The New Life

‘The Swan’ is a poem by the American poet Mary Oliver (1935-2019), who has perhaps not received as much attention from critics as she deserves. It’s been estimated that she was the bestselling poet in the United States at the time of her death, so a few words of analysis about some of her work

January 3, 2023, 12:31pm Here’s a piece of good literary news to start the year: a new independent bookstore named after the legendary Octavia E. Butler is opening in Pasadena, California, where the late Sci-Fi icon was born and raised. I took the leap and quit my job to open my very own bookstore. Octavia’s

January 3, 2023, 7:14am Another year, another batch of new books to look forward to. If any of your resolutions involve reading more, we’ve got you covered. * Deepti Kapoor, Age of Vice(Riverhead) “Riveting … Kapoor paints a mesmerizing picture of violence and decadence, of struggle and hope, of corruption and redemption.”–BookPage Teju Cole, Black

‘Everybody’s Protest Novel’ is a polemical essay by James Baldwin (1924-87), published in 1949. In the essay, Baldwin outlines the problem with novels which highlight the oppression of black people in the United States, starting with Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the 1850s. For Baldwin, these novels are fantasies which actually perpetuate the status quo rather

The Baillie Gifford Prize is the most prestigious nonfiction literary award in the world. We checked in with some past winners about their year in reading. * Craig Brown, 2020 Baillie Gifford Prize-winner for 150 Glimpses of the Beatles, recommends: Geoff Dyer is the funniest and most original nonfiction writer we have. In The Last

‘Young Goodman Brown’ is an 1835 short story by the American author Nathaniel Hawthorne. Inspired in part by the Salem witch craze of 1692, the story contains a number of powerful symbols. But how should we analyse the symbolism of the story? Let’s take a closer look at the most important symbols in ‘Young Goodman

Author and Literary Hub Managing Editor Emily Temple and Lit Hub Associate Editor Katie Yee join hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell to talk about Lit Hub’s 38 favorite books of the year as chosen by the staff. The list spans genres from historical to memoir to post-digital post-capitalist manifesto to lesbian Sasquatch novel. Each

The short stories of the American writer Kate Chopin (1850-1904) are important precursors to twentieth-century modernism, and can be viewed as forerunners to the short fiction of Katherine Mansfield, Virginia Woolf, and other high modernists. Where other nineteenth-century writers tended to privilege plot over character, and action over introspection, Chopin focused on interiority and the

The union of Catherine’s parents had been a cause for celebration in the castle of Amboise, one of the most prestigious French castles that belonged to Francis I of France; the marriage of Lorenzo and Madeleine represented the alliance between France and the Papal States that Francis had desired for years. On September 7, 1518,

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times… All right, it was mostly still the worst of times. Looks like we’re stuck in the dark timeline, guys. Sorry about that. Still, things happened this year, and some of them happened to books, or book people, or book Twitter (RIP?). For the

‘The Bloody Chamber’ is the title story in Angela Carter’s 1979 collection of fairy tales rewritten from a feminist perspective. In the story, the longest in the collection, a young bride recounts her marriage to a Marquis whose previous three wives all died in mysterious circumstances, and the grisly discovery she made in a ‘bloody