Literature

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘On Virtue’ is a poem written by Phillis Wheatley (c. 1753-84) about that nebulous and wide-ranging quality known as virtue. Wheatley was the first African-American woman to publish a book of poetry: Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral appeared in 1773 when she was probably still in her

From King Lear to Succession, the sad, mad, and pretty bad dad remains a captivating, if polarizing character in art. What makes a flawed patriarch so transfixing? The more they push us away, the closer we want to get. In Claudia Dey’s third novel, Daughter, “To be loved by your father is to be loved

The men had fun making up the list. It was 2022. They called it their “crush depth rape list.” Sharing it among themselves, these British men serving as submariners in the Royal Navy imagined which women—women submariners with whom they were serving as crew-mates—should be raped by them in case there was a catastrophe aboard

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) Where does the word ‘leviathan’ come from, and what animal does it refer to? The origins of the word are to be found in the Old Testament, but we need to take a closer look at the Bible to uncover the true meaning of the word, and to discover

TODAY: In 1909, Gaston Leroux’s The Phantom of the Opera is first published as a serialization in Le Gaulois.      Gloria Steinem on 50 years of Ms. Magazine: “A movement is a contagion of truth telling: at last, we know we are not alone.” | Lit Hub History The right to read (in private): Anthony Aycock on the

TODAY: In 1835, Edgar Allan Poe marries his 13-year-old cousin, Virginia Clemm.    Of women and warfare: Cynthia Enloe considers the various feminist approaches to women in the military. | Lit Hub History Claudia Dey on the complicated allure of patriarchs: “I thought a lot about how little men have had to do to be

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘I See You Never’ is a short story by Ray Bradbury (1920-2012), published in 1947. One of Bradbury’s shortest stories, ‘I See You Never’ is about a Mexican man who, after two-and-a-half years living in the United States, is told he must leave the country because his visa has

September 22, 2023, 10:18am No one would ever define them that way, but poems are little sculptures, are they not? Words chipped off and white space punched into them until the look matches the textual intent. The National Gallery of Art perhaps agrees with me, having invited some big guns of the poetry world to

Scene: Dedeaux Field. February 1990. Actresses as far as the eye could see. Hundreds upon hundreds of hopefuls converged on the diamond at the University of Southern California to try out for the women’s baseball movie, the talk of the town. Many were very famous. Others not so much. One actress, Glenne Headly, showed up

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘The Black Walnut Tree’ is a poem by the American poet Mary Oliver (1935-2019), a poet 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

September 21, 2023, 3:45pm The era of the Jonathans may be over, but could we be embarking on the age of the Pauls? Today, the Booker Prizes announced their 2023 shortlist, a full 50% of which was written by people named Paul. On the other hand, only one British writer, Chetna Maroo, and only two

Katherine McKittrick’s book Dear Science and Other Stories came in the mail today, along with Rebecca Solnit’s Recollections of My Nonexistence and Geoff Dyer’s See/Saw. I immediately started flipping through the McKittrick because I had heard from someone I work with that it was a weird book, I saw a weird talk of hers on

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) Where did the word thoughtcrime originate? Most people, if asked, would probably shrug and say they don’t know. Of those people who feel confident enough to venture an answer, most of those would probably answer, ‘In George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.’ Orwell certainly uses the term thoughtcrime, but did the

September 20, 2023, 10:00am Literary Hub is pleased to reveal the cover for Amy Lin’s debut memoir Here After, which will be published by Zibby Books in March. Here’s a bit more about the book from the publisher: Here After is an intimate story of deep love followed by dizzying loss; a stunning, taut memoir

Why turtles? Alexxia Bell, Turtle Rescue League’s president and co-founder Natasha have, in their years together, rescued other creatures, from squirrels to salamanders (including a skunk they found on their way to pick up an injured turtle; once inside their little car, and with an hour left to travel, the animal, in extremis, sprayed its

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) The English writer Hector Hugh Munro (1870-1916), who is better known under his pen name Saki, was a master of the short comic story and, in some ways, a missing link between Oscar Wilde and P. G. Wodehouse. What’s more, Saki was that rare writer who could write humorously,

September 19, 2023, 3:05pm Well, group text, the Bad Art Friend saga has finally come to an end. In case you forgot about the biggest literary story of 2021 (bless you, really), it all stemmed from Robert Kolker’s New York Times feature “Who Is the Bad Art Friend?”, which treated us all to the story of

Writing as a foreigner in one’s own language doesn’t mean, for Antoine Volodine, writing stories of “the other” facing off against the familiarity of the homeland, the security of the native or the citizen, whatever you want to call the insider position whence “identities” are defined and bestowed (Antoine Volodine is a pseudonym). According to