Literature

June 22, 2023, 10:24am Oh dear. Earlier this month, Publishers Weekly reported on romance readers’ increased appetite for books with “cinnamon rolls” and “golden retrievers” as their leading men—categories that are exactly what they sound like: “sweet, supportive, and kind” (CR) and possessed of “a warm, floppy energy and positive attitude” (GR). “We’re seeing changing

June 22, 2023, 12:35pm The child in each of us Knows paradise.Paradise is home.Home as it was Or home as it should have been. Paradise is one’s own place,One’s own people,One’s own world,Knowing and known,Perhaps even Loving and loved. Yet every child Is cast from paradise-Into growth and new community,Into vast, ongoingChange. Octavia E. Butler, beloved Sci-Fi titan and

TODAY: In 1851, Sojourner Truth’s “Ain’t I a Woman” is published in the Anti-Slavery Bugle.     Also on Lit Hub: Stacy Jane Grover recounts the quiet shuffle of a death vigil in Central Appalachia • New poetry from Megan Fernandes • Read from Leila Slimani’s newly translated novel, Watch Us Dance (tr. Sam Taylor)

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter’. This line is among the most famous quotations found in the work of John Keats (1795-1821). But what does the line mean, and how should we analyse it? How can ‘unheard’ melodies be of any use to anyone? ‘Ode on

June 21, 2023, 10:21am “I believe, to quote the Salvadoran poet Roque Dalton, ‘that poetry, like bread, is for everyone.’” So begins the reign of Ricardo Maldonado at the Academy of American Poets, announced on Wednesday to be its new president and executive director—the first Latino poet to be so named. Maldonado was born and

Lorrie Moore’s latest novel, I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home, is available now. * Who do you most wish would read your book?Someone who loves to make operas out of novels. So… Massenet? Also anyone who is susceptible to letting the voices of a narrative wash over them and settle in some

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘Video Games’ is one of Lana Del Rey’s best-known songs. But what is the meaning of this downtempo ballad? The lyrics, which were written by Del Rey and Justin Parker, invite two possible, somewhat conflicting, interpretations. Let’s take a closer look at the song’s lyrics and analyse their ambiguous

June 20, 2023, 9:15am Six authors have been named to the shortlist for the 2023 Miles Franklin award, Australia’s top literary gong, with a AU$60,000 prize being dangled for the eventual winner. The shortlist is: Jessica Au, Cold Enough for Snow Robbie Arnott, Limberlost Yumna Kassab, The Lovers Fiona Kelly McGregor, Iris Shankari Chandran, Chai

The American Ambassador’s VillaIt must have been the fall of 1988 or the winter of 1989. We were first-graders at a pool party: we lost our minds. For a few hours it was all cannonballs and sugar and squealing, and maybe somewhere on the periphery a grown-up in the employ of the embassy was watching

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘The Romance of a Busy Broker’ is a short story by the US short-story writer O. Henry, whose real name was William Sydney Porter (1862-1910). His stories are characterised by their sentimentality and by their surprise twist endings. Both of these elements became something of a signature feature, and

This first appeared in Lit Hub’s Craft of Writing newsletter—sign up here. The essay that shifted me from the “promising kid” to “young upstart” category, and almost deposited me prematurely in the “overrated incontinent” bin where I presently dwell, was a scholarly essay about a book collector named Mikimoto Ryuzo. I had become vaguely obsessed with this

June 16, 2023, 8:42am The 23rd Young Lions Fiction Award, handed out by the New York Public Library to a novel or collection of short stories, went to Brothers Alive author Zain Khalid at a June 15th ceremony. The $10,000 award recognizes a writer under 35, and was judged this year by Venita Blackburn, Jonas

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) There are quite a few colourful synonyms for nonsense and a number of them have curious and noteworthy origins. Some of them can be rather direct and even coarse: a fact which reveals a lot about our need to find blunt, no-nonsense words to counteract the effects of (perceived

June 16, 2023, 10:00am Welcome to a new century of Bloomsdays (long may they run). As James Joyce’s masterpiece, Ulysses, turns 101, let us take a moment to honor one of the great works of literature ever produced, set on this day in Dublin, 1904. If you’re reading this, you probably don’t need my particular

When I was watching Asteroid City, the new film from Wes Anderson, I kept thinking of a line from The Fabelmans, the Steven Spielberg movie that came out last year: “in our family, it’s the scientists versus the artists.” Asteroid City is a film about a group of strangers in September 1955 who all wind

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) Written by Taylor Swift herself along with Liz Rose, ‘All Too Well’ has become one of Swift’s most famous songs since it was first released in 2012. It is also one of her most lyrically rich and interesting songs, so it deserves closer analysis. In 2021, as part of

TODAY: In 1938, T.H. White’s The Sword in the Stone is published.  “When we write ‘I’ in the personal essay it is a philosophical act as much as it is a creative one.” Sarah Viren on essayistic visions of the self. | Lit Hub Criticism On the mental health fallout from the horror of WWI. | Lit Hub

June 16, 2023, 11:12am This week, PRINT Magazine introduced me to the work of Candace Hicks, a Nacogdoches, Texas-based artist who makes, among other things, gorgeous and beguiling cloth recreations of classic composition notebooks, complete with embroidered text on functional pages. “Sewing every line, letter, and illustration in the books enhances their status as objects,”