Literature

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

I live in a small college town in central Vermont, where during a normal academic year, the college provides ample opportunities for cultural enrichment: concerts, plays, films, lectures, and so on. But then came the pandemic: the students had been sent home, the library was closed (books could still be fetched for faculty, but there

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) Not many 1980s pop songs have inspired a world-famous meme, but ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’ by Rick Astley certainly has that claim to fame. The song – one of the catchiest of tunes released through the powerhouse that was Stock Aitken and Waterman – is often derided and

This first appeared in Lit Hub’s Craft of Writing newsletter—sign up here. If character is the aspect of a story readers consciously cling to—the one they most clearly remember—then structure has a more subtle effect, yet it is key to what makes the experience of reading a novel satisfying. Do you need to use flashbacks, or separate

TODAY: In 1959, Ernest Hemingway’s 60th birthday party sets a palm tree on fire. (Read more about it here.)    Michael R. Kratz outlines the unique challenges of translating The Brothers Karamazov into English. | Lit Hub Translation “If your subject matter is very dark, you might want to allow some light in.” Paula Hawkins

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) The list of synonyms for the word ‘boring’ is not, ironically, an exhaustive or monotonously long list. There are relatively few common synonyms to denote the idea of something being boring, but there are some handy ones. Below, we introduce some of the best boring synonyms – and antonyms

TODAY: In 1967, three-time Pulitzer Prize winner Carl Sandburg dies at 89.    Twenty years after Roberto Bolaño’s death, Aaron Shulman unpacks the extraordinary literary afterlife of the Chilean poet and novelist. | Lit Hub Criticism “Once I can’t rely on sight to write anymore, will I, like Borges, no longer be quite sure who is