Literature

TODAY: In 1818, Emily Brontë, seen here in a portrait made by her brother Branwell, is born.   “How is our work circulated in a marketplace that struggles not just to see all of its writers as equals, but to pay them as equals?” Elaine Castillo reckons with the problems at the heart of publishing. |

Writers of short stories have said a great deal about relationships of various kinds, and although the novel may be the preferred form for teasing out the complexities and conflicts of a long-term relationship, the short-story form can also provide writers with enough space to pinpoint a particular critical moment in a relationship, a moment

July 29, 2022, 12:49pm The Princess Diaries was first released on this day in 2001, and because it’s based on a book, that officially means I can write about it for literary hub dot com and no one can stop me. My fellow ’90s babies need no recap of this hit movie, but for the

July 29, 2022, 9:00am July 30 is officially Paperback Book Day! It’s apparently the day that Penguin started publishing paperbacks, way back in 1935. And what a glorious day it was! Who doesn’t love paperbacks? They feel so nice in your hands! They fit so conveniently into your bag! Curious about the history behind the

‘Fat’ is a short story by the American writer Raymond Carver. In just a few pages, Carver’s narrator recounts the day she served a very large man who came into the diner where she works as a waitress. Seeing this man inspires a number of feelings in the narrator, although their significance requires careful analysis

July 28, 2022, 4:40pm Watched by all. Seen by none. As I wrote last month when the first teaser trailer dropped, hopes are high for Andrew Domink’s NC-17 adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates’ gargantuan work of historical bio-fiction. Now, with the release of an action-packed full-length trailer (in which we get our first glimpses of Bobby

TODAY: In 1866, notable friend of animals Beatrix Potter is born.    “The rings of Saturn share a structure with the way we think, the way I write, floating from part to part, cell to cell, ice crystal to ice crystal across the synapse.” In the first of a new series, 13 Ways of Looking,

A ‘quest’ is defined by the OED as ‘A search or pursuit in order to find something; the action of searching’. Poets have often used the quest motif to discuss all manner of subjects, from religion to nobility to that most important thing, the quest we as individuals take to find ourselves. The following poems

July 27, 2022, 10:00am Literary Hub is pleased to reveal the cover for Szilvia Molnar’s debut novel, The Nursery, forthcoming from Pantheon in March 2023. The novel, a “visceral and revelatory portrait of a woman struggling with maternal fear and its looming madness,” follows a translator at home with her new baby, Button. Here’s the

TODAY: In 1928, Radclyffe Hall’s novel The Well of Loneliness is published by Jonathan Cape in London. (Later that year, it is convicted on the grounds of obscenity due to its theme of lesbian love.)    Ideas can come from anywhere, writes TJ Klune—including from a googly-eyed Roomba. | Lit Hub Craft & Advice “I didn’t

‘Hearts and Hands’ 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 irony and by their surprise twist endings. Both of these elements became something of a signature feature, and ‘Hearts and Hands’ exploits both within its very brief

July 26, 2022, 4:31pm While we do not, under any circumstances, have to hand it to Skyhorse, publisher of Sandy Hook deniers, anti-vaxxers, January 6th conspiracy theorists, and Woody Allen—their brand is extremely consistent. To wit: they will be publishing another book by disgraced biographer Blake Bailey (they picked up Bailey’s Roth biography after W. W. Norton

July 26, 2022, 4:55am Coming to an indie bookstore/library near you today! * Dwyer Murphy, An Honest Living(Viking) “Like the best noir practitioners, Murphy uses the mystery as scaffolding to assemble a world of fallen dreams and doom-bitten characters.”–The New York Times Book Review Elaine Castillo, How To Read Now(Viking) “How to Read Now offers

Many of the most quoted, and quotable, lines in Emily Dickinson’s poetry are her opening lines. Perhaps no other poet has produced so many memorable first lines to poems in all of their oeuvre. And it’s worth remembering that Dickinson (1830-86), an American poet who lived much of her life as a virtual hermit in

July 25, 2022, 3:31pm Literary Twitter was not thrilled with Pamela Paul’s most recent New York Times op-ed, which was just another iteration of her usual formula, i.e. “the inchoate woke mob of my fever-dreams is just as bad for the world as the successful, well funded 30-year conservative plan to overrun the judicial branch

I have a fairly large crime fiction library at home and had access to a vastly larger one still for several years while I was working days at the Center for Fiction, in the old building on Forty-Seventh Street, just shy of the diamond district, which you crossed through on your way to and from

When the original John Wick knocked audiences on their collective asses back in 2014, they really had no idea of the Sturm und Drang it had taken to bring the ambitious action film to life or the intricate planning for the elaborate stunt work, balletic gunplay, slick noir-infused aesthetic, and kinetic editing. Despite all the

July 22, 2022, 9:25am This week, composer, violinist, and vocalist Caroline Shaw—who in 2013 became the youngest ever recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Music—announced her second album with Attacca Quartet: Evergreen will be out from Nonesuch on September 23. Shaw and Attacca Quartet also shared the opening track from the album, “First Essay: Nimrod,”