Literature

‘The Locusts’ is a short chapter or tale within The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury’s 1950 science fiction novel which describes human exploration of, and settlement on, the planet Mars at the turn of the century after Earth becomes uninhabitable in the wake of nuclear war. In ‘The Locusts’, ninety thousand Americans from Earth emigrate to

November 14, 2022, 11:07am The BBC and A24 are teaming up to adapt Douglas Stuart’s Booker Prize-winning novel Shuggie Bain as a TV series. Douglas himself will script the show, which will be produced by A24 for BBC One. Shuggie Bain, Douglas’ debut novel, has been something of a critical and commercial phenomenon since its

After Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter became official on October 27, Margaret Atwood tweeted, “Any truly viable alternatives to Twitter yet?” Atwood wasn’t the only writer looking for the next literary water cooler. In recent days, my feed has been flooded with authors lamenting the imminent loss of digital community. One of the more emotional

November 11, 2022, 10:21am Look, it’s easy to dunk on nerd-bro crypto evangelists… So let’s! In a September profile of brand new poor person Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, he makes it pretty clear that books are for beta losers who won’t ever know the rush of losing $16 billion in a

One evening last December I made a visit to London for a gala dinner at the National Gallery on Trafalgar Square. I had recently published a book, Empire of Pain, which was an investigative chronicle of three generations of the wealthy Sackler family. Known for their philanthropy, the Sacklers had become famous for making lavish

November 11, 2022, 11:07am Oh yes. This week, Detroit’s Metro Times highlighted A Ain’t Always for Apple: An Erotic Adult Alphabet Book, which is . . . exactly what it sounds like. The book (which has become a multi-volume series) was written and self-published by Detroit woman Char Jay in the hopes of combat adult illiteracy. “My

TODAY: In 1984, Chester Himes dies at 75.   Get to know this year’s National Book Award finalists. | Lit Hub “Our teeth tell stories about us, about the way that we have lived, about where we come from, about our habits, our health, and status.” Angelique Stevens muses on dentistry, poverty, and inequality. | Lit Hub Memoir Ryan Holiday on using the lessons

‘The Man Who Was Almost a Man’ is a short story by the American author Richard Wright (1908-60), originally published as ‘Almos’ a Man’ in Harper’s Bazaar in 1940 before being revised by Wright later in his life. The final version was published in 1960. In the story, a black youth in the American South

November 11, 2022, 11:17am I guess if you’re a publisher whose stated mission is to disrupt the publishing industry, you have to move fast and break things, no matter how ghoulish that makes you. Such is apparently the case for “hybrid publisher” Ballast Books (“More Than A Publisher, A Brand Builder”), who is capitalizing on

On August 14, 2020 the animal transport Gulf Livestock 1 departed Napier, New Zealand, bound for China. The Panamanian-registered vessel was carrying almost 6,000 live cattle and had a crew of 43: 39 men from the Philippines, including the captain, two from New Zealand and two from Australia. On 2 September, when the ship was southwest

November 10, 2022, 2:23pm As you may have seen on Book Twitter today, the unionized workers of HarperCollins are striking to secure a fair contract, livable wages, and a more equitable publishing industry. Some 250 employees—across the editorial, publicity, sales, marketing, legal and design departments—agreed to go on an indefinite strike after negotiations with the

TODAY: In 1844, Hans Christian Andersen’s New Fairy Tales (Nye Eventyr), including “The Ugly Duckling” (“Den grimme ælling”), is published.  “Our teeth tell stories about us, about the way that we have lived, about where we come from, about our habits, our health, and status.” Angelique Stevens muses on dentistry, poverty, and inequality. | Lit

‘If We Must Die’ is a poem by Claude McKay (1889-1948), a Jamaican-American poet who is often regarded as the first major poet of the Harlem Renaissance. The poem was originally published in The Liberator magazine in 1919, and was reprinted in McKay’s 1922 collection, Harlem Shadows, which arose from McKay’s urge to place ‘If

November 9, 2022, 12:21pm For as long as humans have been writing, we’ve been writing about the things that make us miserable. And there’s something almost heartening about the knowledge that there are some constants in the history of human misery: tiny, itch-provoking bugs, for one. As further evidence of humanity’s long-standing war with lice,

TODAY: In 1967, the first issue of Rolling Stone is published. Kris Jansma on working the polls and having long (bipartisan) conversations about literature with his fellow Election Inspectors. | Lit Hub Politics Read rapid-fire interviews with the National Book Award finalists. | Lit Hub “Now we have conversations where we can’t remember what’s in the

November 8, 2022, 1:04pm Because I contribute heavily to the Lit Hub Instagram account, I spend an unconventional amount of my free time taking screenshots whenever there’s a writer in a movie or TV show. (To my friends and family who have had to put up with my incessant pausing, I’m sorry!!) This means that

“In all creation there is nothing constant,” says Pythagoras in the final book of the Metamorphoses. All things are subject to the power of change: bodies, landscapes, cities, nations—even the cosmos. Ovid announces his epic’s main theme as metamorphosis in its first two lines: “My spirit moves to tell of shapes transformed / into new

‘What Sally Said’ is a short story or vignette from Sandra Cisneros’ 1984 novel The House on Mango Street. Cisneros, born in 1954, is a Mexican-American author whose fiction and poetry often reflect the lives of Latin-American communities, especially children, in the United States. The narrator of the novel is Esperanza Cordero, a 12-year-old Chicana