May 16, 2022, 3:50pm Following last week’s surprising news that The Black Mountain Institute at The University of Nevada, Las Vegas, had sold the magazine The Believer to a marketing company called Paradise Media, The Believer is now back with its former parent company, McSweeney’s. The Sex Toy Collective(!), a website owned by Paradise which
Literature
The following first appeared in Lit Hub’s The Craft of Writing newsletter—sign up here. You would think by now I would know how to make a book of poems. Apparently, I have written six books of poetry. But books are still a mystery to me. I begin, as most poets do, with one poem at a
‘Kafka and His Precursors’ is an essay by the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986), in which Borges examines some earlier writers and argues that their themes and moods prefigure the writing of the Czech author Franz Kafka (1883-1924). Towards the end of ‘Kafka and His Precursors’, Borges famously asserts that every writer creates his
TODAY: In 1954, The Pajama Game opens on Broadway. “The issue is that their emotional lives have everything they need to be interesting, and yet they fall short of seeming interesting on screen.” Nylah Burton reviews the new adaptation of Sally Rooney’s Conversations with Friends. | Lit Hub Film & TV How can we understand poet
May 13, 2022, 11:28am Swansea University’s Dylan Thomas Prize, awarded every year to a writer aged 39 or younger, is one of the most prestigious awards for young writers. This year, the honor (and £20,000 purse) goes to Patricia Lockwood for her debut novel, No One Is Talking About This. The 2022 judges were Namita
‘The Fifth Story’ is a 1964 short story by the Ukrainian-born Brazilian novelist and short-story writer Clarice Lispector (1920-77). In the story, a narrator describes how she prepared a recipe of sugar, flour, and plaster in order to get rid of a cockroach infestation. However, this simple event is described in five different ways, with
TODAY: In 1925, Virginia Woolf’s novel Mrs Dalloway is published. What can literature tell us about the “profound emotions connected with great science”? | Lit Hub Science Unpacking the literary destruction of the Ukrainian language. | Lit Hub Ukraine “Limón does not come at truth with the slant of Dickinson; she is, rather, more inclined
May 13, 2022, 12:00pm Literary Hub is pleased to reveal the cover for Erika T. Wurth’s literary horror novel White Horse, which will be published by Flatiron Books on November 1. In her big-publishing debut, Wurth, an urban Native writer of Apache/Chickasaw/Cherokee descent, offers a gritty, vibrant, “metal-to-the-end” (Stephen Graham Jones, author of The Only
‘You, Andrew Marvell’ is a poem by the American modernist poet Archibald MacLeish (1892-1982), published in his seventh collection New Found Land in 1930. The poem’s title alludes to the seventeenth-century metaphysical poet Andrew Marvell (1621-78), and in particular to Marvell’s poem ‘To His Coy Mistress’. MacLeish’s poem is about the changes that all great
May 13, 2022, 12:48pm You’ve Got Mail is a many splendored thing: a fascinating, variegated film that braids together themes of hope and despair, friendship and heartbreak, love and hatred, preservation and destruction, resistance and surrender, technology and analogs. It is a depressed capitalist critique, a doting literary pastiche, a valentine to New York City,
TODAY: In 1885, Japanese writer, artist, and philosopher Saneatsu Mushanokōji is born. Making books in bomb shelters: Kateryna Volkova reflects on life as a publisher in wartime Ukraine. | Lit Hub Ukraine “That nameless young woman prepared me for what I did not know my future would bring: stinging quips and side-eye admonishment from the
‘Ain’t I a Woman?’ – sometimes known as ‘Ar’n’t I a Woman?’ – is the title of a speech which Sojourner Truth, a freed African slave living in the United States, delivered in 1851 at the Women’s Convention in Akron, Ohio. The actual text of the speech has been the subject of some debate and
May 12, 2022, 11:51am Conjunctions editor Bradford Morrow announced today that the magazine would continue publishing at Bard College, which has reversed its previous decision to withdraw funding. Morrow shared a statement from Bard on Thursday: Bard College is pleased to announce that, following productive conversations with our friend and colleague Bradford Morrow, founding editor
The following is excerpted from David Constantine’s new collection of stories, Rivers of the Unspoilt World. Constantine has previously published several collections of poetry, two novels, and five collections of short stories. He edited Modern Poetry in Translation for many years. He is also translator of Hölderlin, Brecht, Goethe, Kleist, Michaux and Jaccottet. He is
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-94) died young, but in his forty-four years he wrote some of the most enduringly popular and influential novels ever written, as well as a number of perfectly crafted short stories. He also wrote popular poems for children. We have collected some of Stevenson’s best poems in a separate post. But what
May 11, 2022, 12:38pm Starting a classic novel like Dracula can be a little intimidating. Going it alone can also… suck. Lucky for us, the folks behind Dracula Daily have come up with something delightful: you can get Bram Stoker’s classic emailed to you in bite-size (sorry) pieces. From their website: Bram Stoker’s Dracula is an epistolary novel—it’s
TODAY: In 1843, Spanish novelist Benito Pérez Galdós is born. “They are exploring what it means to be a cowboy in contemporary America.” Dispatches from the country’s only touring Black rodeo. | Lit Hub Photography What can literature tell us about the “profound emotions connected with great science”? | Lit Hub Science “Twenty years ago,
‘Rebecca’ is a short story by the American writer Donald Barthelme (1931-89), whose work is sometimes labelled as ‘postmodernist’ (a label he was not entirely comfortable with, but which he accepted) and, occasionally, ‘metafiction’ (a label he was less happy with). Published in the New Yorker in 1975, ‘Rebecca’ is a short story about love,