Literature

Writer and editor Alexander Chee joins hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell live from the annual Writers for Readers gala in Kansas City to discuss editing Best American Essays 2022. Chee talks about what makes a strong essay and how he curated the volume, as well as how his training as a speed reader stood

November 23, 2022, 11:38am In days of yore—that is, my childhood in the paper-mill town of Mexico, Maine—a labor strike looked like an ugly affair. Picketing men in steel-toed boots screamed themselves hoarse at every shift change, their righteous anger rising into a sky thick with the sulfurous clouds of papermaking. Scabs go home! Scabs go

‘Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers’ is a 1951 poem by the American poet Adrienne Rich (1929-2012), published in her first poetry collection, A Change of World, which was published while the precocious Rich was still in her early twenties. Rich was known for her feminist writings as well as her poetry, and this fact is relevant for

TODAY: In 1891, Japanese playwright, poet, and author Masao Kume is born.   Eleanor Lanahan on discovering the hidden artistic talents of her grandmother: the one and only Zelda Fitzgerald. | Lit Hub Art What T.S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf first made of each other. | Lit Hub Biography How Thomas Jefferson, consummate storyteller, shaped colonial

I traveled halfway down into Staten Island to see Bones and All, Luca Guadagnino’s emotional teenage-cannibal fairytale, during the New York Film Festival, and I’d wander farther and longer if I had to, if that’s the only way I could see it a second time. The film, based on the 2015 novel by Camille DeAngelis,

In 1985, the year Don DeLillo’s classic novel White Noise was first published, I was 15, a year older but considerably less intellectually sophisticated than Heinrich, the son of protagonist Jack Gladney. Heinrich, a kid who plays chess by mail with an imprisoned murderer, says things like: “If you came awake tomorrow in the Middle

November 21, 2022, 1:34pm Because we believe in democracy here at Lit Hub dot com, I felt it was particularly important that you all knew about this upcoming vote: Oxford English Dictionary’s Word of the Year. Yes, that’s right. YOU have a say. For the first time, they’re opening it to a public vote. Honestly,

‘Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?’ is a 1966 short story by the American writer Joyce Carol Oates. It is regarded by many critics as Oates’ best story, and is widely studied and praised for its treatment of some of the darker aspects of early 1960s America. First published in the literary journal

November 21, 2022, 9:30am On Friday, Longwood University announced the finalists for the 2022 John Dos Passos Prize, which is the oldest literary award given by a Virginia college or university, and which honors “one of America’s most talented but underappreciated writers. . . whose work offers incisive, original commentary on American themes.” The finalists

“Have you ever been told you’re different, odd, or simply don’t belong? In a world full of normies, do you feel like an outcast?” So says principal Larissa Weems (Gwendoline Cristie) as she introduces Nevermore Academy in the upcoming Netflix series Wednesday. In Tim Burton’s adaptation of the classic Charles Addams cartoon, premiering on November

If you’re a literary genius, you’ve got it easy—right? Wrong. Even Jane Austen, indisputably one of the greatest novelists in the English language, spent years struggling to be published and became so dispirited that there were moments when she almost walked away. The story begins with an almost-twenty Jane, at home in Hampshire. It’s the

The best journalism movies emphasize dogged research and writerly integrity, with “Truth” clearly framed as the guiding principle and ultimate purpose of such investigations, and “justice” as its primary effect. She Said follows suit, but it also develops a highly personal and empathetic tone—more social and compassionate and intimate, more Spotlight and less All the

TODAY: In 1942, poet Sharon Olds is born.    Aristotle loved a listicle: On one of humanity’s oldest writing systems. | Lit Hub “Should I stay or should I go? (And where?)” Jess deCourcy Hinds wonders what will become of Literary Twitter after Elon Musk’s takeover of the social network. | Lit Hub Tech Take a look inside

‘From Blossoms’ is a 1986 poem by the American poet Li-Young Lee. In the poem, a speaker celebrates the joyful experience of buying and eating some peaches which began life as flower blossoms. Li-Young Lee was born in Indonesia in 1957, although his parents were Chinese. His parents settled in the United States in 1964

November 18, 2022, 1:44pm We all know books have the power to move us to tears, and that those tears have the power to move books. Last year, with the sudden rise on popularity of certain titles, the publishing industry realized that BookTok might have the ability to shape the market. One reader cries on

‘What We Talk About When We Talk About Love’ is perhaps the best-known short story by the American writer Raymond Carver (1938-88). The story sees four characters, who form two romantic couples, sitting around one afternoon and drinking gin while they discuss the meaning of love. Carver’s fiction and its effect are often subtle, but

The following is a story by Quinn Adikes from the new issue of Shenandoah . Adikes’ lives in Brooklyn and has an MFA from Stony Brook Southampton, where he also taught Creative Writing. Cover image: “Guadalicue, 2019” by Esteban Ramón Peréz You got on our boat and left for work. I stayed on our island

November 17, 2022, 7:00pm Katherine Rundell has won the UK’s £50,000 2022 Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction for Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne, a biography of the poet. Chair of judges Caroline Sanderson said that the decision had been unanimous. “Exquisitely rendered, its passion, playfulness and sparkling prose seduced all of us,” she said.