Literature

Children’s books, comics, puzzles, toy cars, soccer balls, illustrations, the lyrics of songs and lullabies: taken together, the stories in Michele Mari’s You, Bleeding Childhood represent a cataloguing of objects and texts, a crystallization—through the most personal artifacts—of a childhood, and with it, a life. A literary project such as this could no doubt be

I’ve always loved the novella, which Henry James called “the beautiful and blessed nouvelle” and which Joyce Carol Oats deemed “the most difficult, at least for me” of “all the literary prose forms.” Its length makes it seem grander and more important than a mere short story, while its brevity means that the reader can

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) Sometimes, writers get undue credit for coining particular words. Did Shakespeare really ‘invent’ the word ‘alligator’? Or ‘puking’? Or is his use of these words simply the earliest use we have (or at least, have found) on record? (Indeed, in the case of ‘alligator’ Shakespeare’s isn’t even the earliest

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) Let’s begin with a quiz question: what is the title of the poem in which the phrase ‘dark Satanic Mills’ appears? Is it a) ‘Jerusalem’ or b) Milton? Most people would probably go for a), but although we know commonly know William Blake’s poem (or the words to the

August 7, 2023, 12:29pm Good news for Carley Fortune, who put just the right mix of trauma (a parent lost in a deadly car crash, postpartum depression) and love (love) in her bestselling 2023 romantic novel Meet Me At The Lake, and has reportedly sold film rights to the production company Archewell Foundation $3.8 million,

The following is from David Connor’s debut novel Oh God, the Sun Goes. Connor studied at Pomona College and the California Institute of the Arts, where he was the recipient of the William H. Ahmanson Endowed Scholarship Award. He lives in New York City and Montreal, Canada. A metal object moves through a cloud, emerges

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘Eyes Do More Than See’ is a very short story by Isaac Asimov (1920-92), which originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in April 1965. Background The story had a curious genesis. In 1964, Playboy magazine (which published serious fiction as well as erotic stories and

August 4, 2023, 11:23am Today’s news from the front lines of Florida’s war on kids: The state has “effectively banned” Advanced Placement Psychology because its anti-LGBTQ law forbids the course’s material on gender and sexuality. Because the College Board quite reasonably refuses to excise sections acknowledging the full spectrum of gender and sexual orientation to

August 4, 2023, 11:26am Waaaaariorrrrrs! Come out to play-ayyyyy! Everybody might be packed, but it’s hard to imagine how it would be possible to improve on Walter Hill’s 1979 cult classic The Warriors, based on the novel of the same name by Sol Yurick, which was published in 1965 (and which was itself loosely based on

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘Reading’ is a chapter from Henry David Thoreau’s 1854 book Walden; or, Life in the Woods. The book details Thoreau’s decision to leave behind modern civilisation and live a simple life in the woods in Massachusetts. In ‘Reading’, Thoreau laments the fact that his fellow citizens of Concord in

TODAY: In 1959, Edgar Guest, a British-born American poet who became known as the People’s Poet, dies at 77.    Victoria Gosling interrogates the legend of King Arthur: “Is Arthur why Britain, despite its history, continues to see itself as the good guy?” | Lit Hub Criticism Wylie Dufresne on the fun, never-ending process of becoming a chef.

August 4, 2023, 12:04pm Michael Chabon—the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Wonder Boys, and The Yiddish Policeman’s Union—spent his Covid quarantine taking a trip…through time! Well, not literally, but in an emotional and curatorial sense, the speculative fiction maestro can now be considered a time traveller. Yes, as reported

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) Prominent themes in Hughes’ poetry include: nature, especially the struggle for survival that is inherent within nature, as well as myth (he was a devotee of Robert Graves’ 1948 book The White Goddess, which argued for a mythical basis for poetic inspiration,  centred on the triple goddess of maiden-mother-crone)

August 4, 2023, 1:02pm We are in the countdown to the Joyce Carol Oates documentary (September 8, for those playing along at home), and JCO has given the Financial Times, of all people, a neat dose of her thoughts on life, the cosmos, and Xitter. Among the various gems nestled into Madison Garbyshire’s profile, one

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘The 60 Minute Zoom’, a 1976 short story by the British author J. G. Ballard (1930-2009), belongs to his middle period, when he was becoming more interested in the psychology of the camera eye and the relationship between sex and videotape (‘lies’ optional). ‘The 60 Minute Zoom’: plot summary

August 3, 2023, 10:00am Literary Hub is pleased to reveal the cover for Uche Okonkwo’s debut short story collection A Kind of Madness, which Tin House will publish in April 2024. Here’s a bit more about the book from the publisher: Set in contemporary Nigeria, Uche Okonkwo’s A Kind of Madness is a collection of

August 3, 2023, 10:15am The quote in the above headline is part of the last line of Rainer Maria Rilke’s famous sonnet, “Archaic Torso of Apollo,” as translated by Stephen Mitchell. It’s a haunting line, among the most recognizable second person directives in all of poetry. Each time I read the poem, I find it

August 2, 2023, 12:49pm Hi Barbie! Are you looking for a good book to read? Maybe to take to the Beach? And/or to bring with you when you go to the movies this weekend? I promise, it’s going to be right up your alley. And also pink, for outfit coordination purposes, of course. You’re welcome.