Literature

July 28, 2023, 12:55pm Sixty-nine (nice, but in Elvish) years ago this week, the godfather of high fantasy, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, published the first novel in a proposed thee-volume epic “largely concerned with hobbits.” The Fellowship of the Ring has, in the decades since publication, shifted over 150 million copies and spawned perhaps the most

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) A paean to drugs? Or alcohol? Or sex? Or the heady sensory experience of falling in love? Just what is the meaning behind ‘Diamonds’, one of Rihanna’s catchiest songs? ‘Diamonds’ is from Rihanna’s seventh studio album, Unapologetic (2012). If the song reminds you of another anthemic ballad from around

TODAY: In 1954, J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring is published.   Poe vs. Himself: On Edgar Allan Poe’s one-sided war with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. | Lit Hub Biography Exploring the dreams of octopuses. | Lit Hub Animals How do we tell the stories of Picasso’s mistresses? Anne Boyd Rioux looks to the “weeping woman,” Dora Maar. | Lit Hub History

July 28, 2023, 1:49pm In the olden days, the popular crowd were devouring Pamela, and watching Marianne Dashwood getting teary over a sonnet (sense before sensibility)—the beginning of what became known as the “sentimental” novel, especially popular for and by among females in the 18th and 19th centuries, though traceable to 17th century poets. T.S.

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘The Silence of the Sirens’ is a very short story by Franz Kafka (1883-1924), written in 1917 but doomed, like so much of his work, to languish in his notebooks before being published after his death. This retelling of a famous myth from classical antiquity is idiosyncratic and worthy

July 28, 2023, 12:12pm Greenwich Entertainment has just released the first trailer for Swedish director Stig Björkman’s Joyce Carol Oates documentary, Joyce Carol Oates: A Body in the Service of Mind, which premiered at the Telluride Film Festival all the way back in 2021. [embedded content] Narrated by Laura Dern (perfect choice), the documentary was 16 years

July 27, 2023, 4:23pm Today, the anonymous Instagram account xoxopublishinggg, which shared memes and anonymous tips about books and the publishing industry, announced via their stories that they “will be going on hiatus with stories,” apparently effective immediately. “It is our two year anniversary today and 97 weeks since we asked for best cry spaces,”

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘Jabberwocky’ is one of the most beloved poems in the English language, perhaps not least because it does such interesting things with that language. A masterpiece of nonsense verse, ‘Jabberwocky’ is also a highly quotable work, and it’s chock-full of memorable lines and puzzling words. Let’s take a closer

On January 10, 1956, W. E. B. Du Bois wrote a letter to his good friend, fellow Marxist, and literary executor Herbert Aptheker that briefly explored his notions on the existence of “Absolute Truth” and his faith in human beings’ ability to use science and reason to change the world. Du Bois noted that he

July 26, 2023, 10:00am Literary Hub is pleased to reveal the cover for Ours, the debut novel by award-winning poet Philip B. Williams, forthcoming from Viking in February. Here’s a bit about the book from the publisher: In this ingenious, sweeping novel, Phillip B. Williams introduces us to an enigmatic woman named Saint, a fearsome

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘Faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.’ This well-known quotation contains the three theological virtues, but also raises some interesting questions about what is meant by ‘charity’ here. So let’s take a closer look at this statement. Chapter 13 of the First Epistle to

July 26, 2023, 10:26am No children responded to my essay on the “adult problem” with kids books, somewhat proving the point. Adults aplenty chimed in, many of them people who work in children’s lit and who had good and interesting things to say that I appreciated learning about. Some others wished to point out that

July 25, 2023, 12:58pm Director Ethan Hawke is currently working on post-production for Wildcat, an upcoming Flannery O’Connor biopic starring his daughter, actor Maya Hawke—a fact I was unaware of until just now, seeing the above photo of Maya as the singular Georgian fiction writer whose comments on race have inspired a reconsideration in recent

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) Tiredness affects us all at some point. But how else can be express the feeling of being tired? There’s a handful of well-known adjectives which work well as synonyms for tired, but there are other, less obvious synonyms as well. Below, we introduce some of the best synonyms –

July 25, 2023, 9:00am Today, the Academy of American Poets announced its 2023 Poet Laureate Fellows, twenty-three poets who “serve as poets laureate of states, counties, and cities across the United States and will be leading public poetry programs in their respective communities in 2023–24.” Each laureate will receive an award of $50,000, for a

July 24, 2023, 2:10pm These days, if you use your book review to call an author a pervert and instruct him to abandon writing for the sake of public morality, most reputable editors will palm you a paltry kill fee and mothball your screed. Not so, it would seem, in 1890. Here’s how an outraged

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) Along with ‘The Tyger’, perhaps ‘London’ is the best-known of all of the poems by William Blake (1757-1827) which he published under the title Songs of Experience. This volume, which is the companion-piece to his earlier Songs of Innocence (indeed, the two volumes should be viewed as one larger

The only place she can meet is Penn Station and she only has an hour. I’ve been looking for a sign to tell me whether or not to move to New York during my month of couch surfing. I’m a baby queer of twenty-four with purple paisley pants and a razor-burned undercut. I’ve been getting