Literature

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘Funeral Blues’, the title often given to W. H. Auden’s poem that begins ‘Stop all the clocks’, is one of the most famous and universally loved lyric poems on the theme of loss. But this loss is related to a number of other prominent themes in the poem, which

September 12, 2023, 8:00am Today, the Whiting Foundation announced the winners of its sixth annual Literary Magazine Prizes, honoring “seven print and digital magazines that are among the most distinctive and lively publications at the forefront of American culture.” This cycle, each winner will be granted $20,000 in 2023, with matching grants of up to

September 11, 2023, 8:00pm Today, the British Academy announced the shortlist for the 2023 British Academy Book Prize for Global Cultural Understanding, an international book prize, now in its 11th year, that “celebrates ground-breaking research-based works of non-fiction that have made an outstanding contribution to the public understanding of world cultures and the ways in

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘The Two Kings and the Two Labyrinths’ is one of the shortest stories by Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986), one of the most original and striking writers of the twentieth century. In reality, the story is not a ‘short story’ in the traditional sense, and although it doesn’t contain any

September 11, 2023, 10:30am Need some mild linguistic fun at your next party? Consider the advice of 1920s entertainment expert Lettie C. Van Derveer, author of such books as Christmas Doings (1920) and Hallowe’en Happenings (1921), Any Day Entertainments (1922) and Holidays and In-Between Times (1923), compendiums of plays, themed games and activities, punny invitation scripts, and

The following is from Ariel Dorfman’s The Suicide Museum. Dorfman is a Chilean-American author, born in Argentina, whose award-winning books in many genres have been published in more than fifty languages and his plays performed in more than one hundred countries. A prominent human rights activist, he worked as press and cultural advisor to Salvador

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) Few songs can be said to typify the mid-noughties music scene like The Killers’ ‘Mr Brightside’. The Las Vegas band’s breakthrough hit, the song has attracted considerable attention from fans and critics. Is this a song about a cheating girlfriend, or a paranoid boyfriend? What are the origins of

This first appeared in Lit Hub’s Craft of Writing newsletter—sign up here. In 2019, I began writing a novel with generative AI. ChatGPT was still three years away from release, but there were backdoor methods for accessing GPT-2, an early version of the technology that undergirds it. I had been inspired by the story of Marianne Moore,

TODAY: In 1873, French writer Alfred Jarry is born.     A rose for Mr. Darcy: When it comes to Jane Austen and The Bachelor, it’s all about the marriage plot. | Lit Hub TV Viniyanka Prasad, founder of The Word: A Storytelling Sanctuary, on the importance of creating communities for marginalized writers. | Lit Hub Sean Michaels

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘Pollock and the Porroh Man’ is a short story by H. G. Wells (1866-1946), first published in the New Budget on 23 May 1895. Set in Africa, it’s a tale of magic, revenge, and adventure, and can perhaps best be categorised as a horror story, with a hint of

TODAY: In 1911, American writer and social critic Paul Goodman is born.    Yiyun Li muses on class, money, joy, and luxury—for writers and their characters. | Lit Hub Memoir “The more closely one scrutinizes The Lord of the Rings, the more extraordinarily metafictional it appears.” Nick Groom wonders, is Tolkien’s mediaevalist fantasy really a work of modernism?

September 8, 2023, 10:00am Literary Hub is pleased to reveal the cover for Ananda Lima’s CRAFT: Stories I Wrote for the Devil, “an intoxicating and surreal fiction debut,” which will be published by Tor Books in June. Here’s a bit more about the book from the publisher: At a Halloween party in 1999, a writer

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘The Eye of the Sibyl’ is a short story by the American writer Philip K. Dick (1928-82), written in 1975 but only first published in 1987, five years after his death. The story’s themes include prognostication and prophecy, and the nature of creativity. Summary First, to summarise ‘The Eye

September 8, 2023, 1:54pm Poor old W. B. Yeats; if they’re not burying the bones of club-footed frenchmen in his grave or making fun of his penchant for monkey gland viagra, they’re attributing fake inspirational quotes to him. Every so often, particularly if you’re browsing the tat n’ tchotchke emporiums of the old country, you’ll

September 7, 2023, 3:00pm Today, the shortlist for the 2023 BBC National Short Story Award with Cambridge University was announced on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row. The BBC National Short Story Award, now in its eighteenth year, grants £15,000 to the winning author; each other shortlisted author will receive £600. “My huge congratulations to the

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) What connects vaccinations with cows? And how did a young boy and a milkmaid help to change the course of medical history? These questions are both related to the origin, or etymology, of the words ‘vaccine’ and ‘vaccination’. So let’s take a closer look at these words. The history

September 7, 2023, 11:53am If you have $3.7 million, you might be in the running to purchase Tregiffian Cottage, the Cornwall home of legendary novelist John Le Carré, who died in 2020. If not, you’ll have to settle for looking at the pictures—and if you’re like the typical Lit Hub reader, ogling his dreamy library

September 6, 2023, 7:00am Attention word nerds: today, Dictionary.com announced its latest update, which includes 566 new entries, 348 new definitions for pre-existing entries, and 2,256 revised definitions. New additions include terms you likely know (nepo baby, decision fatigue, box braids) and a few terms you may not, unless you are more online and/or cooler