Literature

May 10, 2023, 10:00am According to the powers that be (er, apparently according to Dan Wickett of the Emerging Writers Network), May is Short Story Month. To celebrate, the Literary Hub staff will be recommending a single short story, free to read online, every (work) day of the month. Why not read along with us? Today, we recommend: “Who

Shortly after the birth of his sister Virginia in 1951, Springsteen’s family moved in with his paternal grandparents. They would stay there through 1956, but the years spent in that house would remain with Springsteen, a thing to untangle. It was a period of his childhood that, in his telling, would come to the fore

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘Killing Me Softly with His Song’ is a well-known song that has most famously been recorded by Roberta Flack and (under the shorter title ‘Killing Me Softly’) by the Fugees, who gave the song a hip-hop twist and, in doing so, brought the track to the attention of a

May 9, 2023, 10:08am The most thankless characters in literary history are mothers. They’re always birthing important characters and assuming the shape of overplayed metaphors and even, sometimes, marrying the fratricidal brother of their dead spouse, yet somehow they’re secondary characters when it comes to to the billing. This Sunday is the time to remedy

May 9, 2023, 4:55am As May continues, and as the incredible fact that summer is almost here looms, here are some exciting new books to consider picking up today. Below, you’ll find a wide-ranging list, from new releases of classic tales and retellings of others to moving memoirs to provocative arguments about authorship and imperialism,

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) Some of the greatest poets in the English language have penned moving poems to their mothers. Similarly, many great poets who are also mothers in their own right have celebrated and praised their own daughters in their verse, composing heartfelt poems to the women who represent the next generation.

May 8, 2023, 3:33pm Probably not, but it seems likely that he said it. That’s according to an unpublished letter, sent by Fitzgerald to a long-lost cousin back in the spring of 1924, which is going under the hammer this week. In the handwritten note, which Fitzgerald wrote on the eve of a trip to Europe

A desolate moor, haunted by incomprehensible supernatural beings. Chains rattling in a dark castle, ghosts prowling the ramparts. A grisly corpse, hands chopped off and tongue sliced out. For any horror-lovers, whether the Gothic classics or the contemporary greats, these tropes will ring familiar. They come, of course, from Shakespeare. In fact, after more than

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) Is ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’, Nirvana’s best-known song and the anthem of the short-lived grunge movement, a song about revolution, music, or losing one’s virginity? How can we pin down the meaning of this iconic song with its suggestive but rather opaque lyrics? The origins of the song’s title

May 5, 2023, 9:32am When we were but children in a distant former colony, we had a set of cardboard coronation crowns upholstered poorly in imitation velvet so we could play kings and queens. The Queen was on our money, and her portrait hung in our primary school. Now we are on the eve of

May 5, 2023, 9:34am The “richest literary prize in the world for women and non-binary writers,” The Carol Shields Prize for Fiction, announced its first winner over night at an event at Parnassus Books. Please have a glass in hand … Fatimah Asghar, author of When We Were Sisters, published by One World/Random House, takes the

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.’ This famous biblical quotation is found in the Gospels, in Matthew 19:24, Mark 10:25, and Luke 18:25. Jesus speaks these words, but in

TODAY: In 1983, Ezra Jack Keats, author and illustrator of The Snowy Day, dies at 67.    Helen Oyeyemi on the rebel vocabulary of Ágota Kristóf: “If the likes of Kristóf and her kin have anything to do with it, we shall never feel that we’ve finished learning to read.” | Lit Hub Criticism Herb Harris

May 5, 2023, 10:00am According to the powers that be (er, apparently according to Dan Wickett of the Emerging Writers Network), May is Short Story Month. To celebrate, the Literary Hub staff will be recommending a single short story, free to read online, every (work) day of the month. Why not read along with us? Today, we recommend: “Paper

How did hyacinths, the popular flowers, get their name? And what have they to do with homoerotic love, wind, discuses, and Greek mythology? As ever, we’re here to answer these questions, by taking a closer look at the classical myth of Hyacinth and how he came to give his name to the flowers. Before we

May 5, 2023, 10:30am On Monday, at around 3PM (EST), from Columbia University in New York City, the winner of this year’s Pulitzer Prize for Fiction will be announced. As well as a check for a cool $15,000 dollars (which feels a little low, tbh), the victor (if there is to be one; see 2012)

May 4, 2023, 10:00am According to the powers that be (er, apparently according to Dan Wickett of the Emerging Writers Network), May is Short Story Month. To celebrate, the Literary Hub staff will be recommending a single short story, free to read online, every (work) day of the month. Why not read along with us? Today, we

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘At the ’Cadian Ball’ is an 1892 short story by the American writer Kate Chopin (1850-1904). The story is about two men and two women and their romantic involvements leading up to, during, and after the event known as the ’Cadian Ball, a social occasion at which young Cajun