For the people who love book events but who hate getting off the couch, this one’s for you! * In Conversation: Lydia Conklin and Leslie JamisonJune 6 @ 7pm EST In Lydia Conklin’s Rainbow Rainbow, queer, trans, and gender-nonconforming characters seek love and connection in hilarious and heartrending stories that reflect the complexity of our
Literature
TODAY: In 1926, Allen Ginsberg is born. “We need to rid ourselves of this arrogance, of the primitiveness of the authoritarian systems.” A conversation with Belarusian journalist Svetlana Alexievich. | Lit Hub Politics A George Saunders adaptation, Jeff Bridges’ return to TV, and a queer spin on Pride and Prejudice all feature among the
The book known variously as the Song of Solomon, the Song of Songs, and Solomon’s Song is something of an oddity in the Bible, in that it is an unabashed description of romantic and erotic love between a man and a woman. Despite its common title, however, Solomon didn’t write it, and many scholars now
June 2, 2022, 12:13pm A group of activists employed by Amazon protested the sale of anti-trans books on its platform with a die-in on Wednesday, which they held during a company event recognizing the start of Pride Month. The employees, members of the group No Hate at Amazon, laid down at the site where a pride
TODAY: In 1907, Harlem Renaissance writer Dorothy West is born. How James Baldwin’s singular children’s book, Little Man, Little Man, “answers to a higher calling.” | Lit Hub Jean Hanff Korelitz enthuses about fiction and the Hill Cumorah Pageant… obviously. | Lit Hub Questionnaire “If American conscience were only half alive… a scream of
The fiction of the English writer Angela Carter (1940-92) is, first and foremost, the fiction of ideas. She is best-known for her 1979 collection of tales, The Bloody Chamber, which is often described as a series of ‘versions’ or ‘retellings’ of classic children’s fairy tales. But as Carter was quick to point out, she was
June 1, 2022, 11:31am Death of a Salesman is returning to Broadway! In 1949, Arthur Miller won the Pulitzer Prize for this play, a critique of the futility of chasing the American Dream. Willy Loman has spent so much of his life on the road as a traveling salesman; upon returning home, he comes to
TODAY: In 1968, Helen Keller dies at 87. “In themselves they are disproportional, flat, fragile, caricatured, grotesque, carnivalesque.” On Franz Kafka’s nearly lost drawings. | Lit Hub Art Bill McKibben reckons with the myths (and ugly truths) of the American Revolution. | Lit Hub History 11 novels that create their own shape. | Lit
‘The Furnished Room’ is a short story by the US short-story writer O. Henry, whose real name was William Sydney Porter (1862-1910). His stories are characterised by their irony, their occasional sentimentality, and by their surprise twist endings. All of these things became something of a signature feature, and ‘The Furnished Room’, which is one
May 31, 2022, 12:10pm Focusing on a screen, whether it’s your work screen or your post-work FUN SCREEN(!), can feel like it’s draining the life force right out of you and making it impossible to focus on anything longer than 280 characters (and to be honest, some of those long Tweets are a stretch, too).
The following is excerpted from Ann Leary’s new novel, The Foundling.Leary is the New York Times bestselling author of a memoir and four novels including The Good House. Her work has been translated into eighteen languages, and she has written for the New York Times, Ploughshares, NPR, Redbook, and Real Simple, among other publications. Her
Ernest Hemingway’s 1925 short story ‘Cat in the Rain’ is a short vignette about an American husband and wife staying in Italy. The wife notices a cat outside their hotel, in the pouring rain, and wants to bring it inside. As with much of Hemingway’s fiction, he leaves out more than he includes on the
On her arrival in England, Marilyn Monroe expressed how much she wanted to meet two people—poet Dame Edith Sitwell and dramatist Sean O’Casey. The latter was thrilled to hear this news, and told the Stage newspaper, “I would love to see her, and I would like to meet her husband, Arthur Miller, one of the
In the days before my first-ever trip to London, many friends and acquaintances asked me if I was excited to go. I responded that I was; my husband and I had planned this trip to celebrate our having finally paid off the loans incurred on the way to my earning a doctorate in British Renaissance
‘The Village Schoolmaster’ is an unfinished short story by Franz Kafka (1883-1924), begun in 1914-15 before being abandoned by Kafka. The story is about interpretation versus reality, and how our understanding of the world is often determined by our motivations and outlook. ‘The Village Schoolmaster’, which is sometimes known by the alternative title ‘The Giant
Saugerties, a sleepy Hudson Valley town with big shop windows, narrow streets, and an old-fashioned movie theater, surrounded by large tracts of farmland, was known as “the place time forgot.” Two hours north of New York City, it was too far for commuters, so it felt like a world away. This was where I planned
The following first appeared in Lit Hub’s The Craft of Writing newsletter—sign up here. * Maybe five years ago I read a novel in which a man drowns in a lake, and, a few minutes later, his body is found floating on the water’s surface. If any of my writer friends are reading this, they’re probably groaning
Of Herman Melville’s shorter works, ‘Bartleby, the Scrivener’ has remained the most popular and widely studied. Critics have disagreed over the story’s meaning, with this tale of one man who repeatedly asserts that he ‘would prefer not to’ carry out the orders of his employer inviting a raft of interpretations. Melville (1819-91) wrote ‘Bartleby, the