Literature

TODAY: In 1949, travel writer and explorer Helen Churchill Candee, a survivor of the RMS Titanic, dies at 90.     Also on Lit Hub: On the death of the comedy blockbuster • Lou Matthews on the long, booby-trapped road to publication • Read from Attila Bartis’s newly translated novel, The End (tr. Judith Sollosy)

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘Wherever books are burned, men also, in the end, are burned.’ This observation – which is sometimes rendered in slightly different wording – has become famous as a kind of warning statement about the dangers of extreme forms of censorship. But what is the origin of this phrase, and

August 22, 2023, 10:51am If you guessed London, you’re right—London is mentioned at least three times more often than any other European city. (Wonder why?) As Travel Daily reports, a digital printing company called Aura Print has apparently processed the entire Google Books database to “identify the cumulative mentions of 31 prominent European cities across

TODAY: In 1904, American author Kate Chopin (The Awakening) dies at 53.      “You weren’t even allowed to the paddock, where they show the horses. So I took a book. I mean, what would you do?” On Leonora Carrington’s days as a debutante. | Lit Hub Biography 22 new books to brighten up your week.

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘The Fly’ is not one of the best-known short stories of the New Zealand-born writer Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923), but it is significant for being one of her few stories which deals directly with the First World War. In the story, a man is reminded of the death of his

August 21, 2023, 10:00am Literary Hub is pleased to reveal the cover for Emily Raboteau’s forthcoming book, Lessons for Survival: Mothering Against “The Apocalypse”, in which she “uses the lens of motherhood to craft a powerfully moving meditation on race, climate, environmental justice—and what it takes to find shelter.” Lessons for Survival will be published in

The following is from a story from the new issue of The Gettysburg Review. Gen Del Raye is half Japanese and was born and raised in Kyoto, Japan. His debut story collection, Boundless Deep, and Other Stories, won the Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction and is available for preorder from the University of

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘The Kiss’ is a short story by the American writer Kate Chopin (1850-1904), written in a single day (19 September 1894) and published in Vogue magazine the following June. (Chopin was paid just $10 for the story.) ‘The Kiss’ is about a woman who is passionately attracted to one

This first appeared in Lit Hub’s Craft of Writing newsletter—sign up here. About seven years ago, I started a novel called La Niña, about a single woman named Maribel Nava who finds a baby left on her doorstep. This month, I published a novel called My Name Is Iris, about a just-divorced mother named Iris Prince who wakes one

I like to say my new novel, Underjungle, is a tale of love, loss, family, and war—set entirely underwater. So War and Peace, but three-thousand feet deeper. And considerably shorter. And maybe a little funnier, too. It’s also the story of an intelligent, meditative, and sometimes tempestuous species that discover a human body and the

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) The word ‘mysterious’ can be used to describe a wide variety of things: types of people, situations, or events can all be labelled ‘mysterious’. It means, broadly speaking, something that is the source of mystery, of course, and mystery is a word derived from the Latin mystērium which means

Few people have a good word to say about roaches but, like every insect on the planet, look close enough and you’ll find something to admire. Besides, it’s not just those unloved species, barely glimpsed as they scurry into cracks and crevices when you turn on the light in the kitchen. There are well over

TODAY: In 1631, John Dryden, England’s first Poet Laureate, is born.    Lewis Buzbee laments the difficulty of getting rid of books: “I don’t get rid of them, per se; rather, I set them afloat, in search of new homes.” | Lit Hub “A certain step toward falling in love.” On the pleasure and communion of Jane Austen’s country

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘The Electrocution’ is an early short story by the American fantasy author Ray Bradbury (1920-2012), included in his 1996 short-story collection Quicker Than the Eye but first published in The Californian in 1946 under the pseudonym William Elliot. Summary ‘The Electrocution’ is about a carnival double act, Johnny and

The following is from Cleo Qian’s debut book Let’s Go Let’s Go Let’s Go. Qian is a writer from southern California. Her work has been published in The Guardian, Shenandoah, Pleiades, The Common and elsewhere. She lives in New York City. LiLi’s head was in my lap. Her hair, falling away from her face, was

TODAY: In 1981, American actress, novelist, playwright and screenwriter Anita Loos dies at 93.     Also on Lit Hub: Stephanie Heit on joining a lineage of authors with mental health difference • Eight books about intelligent sea creatures • Read a story from Cleo Qian’s debut collection, Let’s Go Let’s Go Let’s Go

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘The Machine That Won the War’ is a 1961 short story by the science-fiction author Isaac Asimov (1920-92). The story is set shortly after Earth and its associated worlds have won a war against an enemy civilisation known as the Denebians. A vast computer named Multivac is credited with

August 17, 2023, 11:30am Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk’s era-defining debut novel about a load of disaffected men beating the bejesus out of each other in order to feel alive, was first published twenty-seven years ago today. The book rapidly gained a cult following, was adapted into one of the most iconic movies of the 1990s