Literature

‘Feathers from a Thousand Li Away’ is a short one-page parable which acts as preface to Amy Tan’s 1989 novel The Joy Luck Club. The novel as a whole is a series of interlinked stories about the daughters of Chinese immigrants who came to America, hoping to give their daughters a better life. A li,

The following is from Anzia Yezierska’s Bread Givers. Yezierska was born in Poland and came to America in 1890 when she was nine years old. By the 1920s she had risen out of poverty and become a successful writer of stories, novels; all autobiographical; and an autobiography, Red Ribbon on a White Horse. Her novel

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) The word ‘literary’ can have several meanings. Obviously it’s most familiar as the adjectival form of literature: i.e., it means ‘of or relating to literature’. But it can also be used to refer to somebody’s style (a literary style of writing), or to describe somebody’s personality (he’s a literary

TODAY: In 1885, Austrian and Czechoslovak writer and journalist Egon Erwin Kisch is born.    “A hypnagogic horror show.” Brian Dillon on migraines and scotoma, and trying to describe the geometry of blind spots. | Lit Hub Health David Sexton considers Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go: “What this book is about is ordinary, normal and everyday, the

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘The Long Rain’ is one of the best-known and most widely studied short stories by the American writer Ray Bradbury (1920-2012). Although Bradbury preferred to describe himself as a ‘fantasy’ writer, this story is most accurately categorised as science fiction. It was originally published (under the title ‘Death-by-Rain’) in

April 28, 2023, 8:23am The Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction has been running for 25 years, recognizing the best work of non-fiction each year with a tidy sum of £25,000. This year, to celebrate its quarter century, the prize looked back on its previous 24 winners to crown a “Winner of Winners Award.” The voice

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘What I Have Been Doing Lately’ is a short story by the Antigua-born writer Jamaica Kincaid (born 1949). It was first published in the Paris Review in 1981 before being reprinted in Kincaid’s first published book, At the Bottom of the River, in 1983. The story is narrated by

This weekend marks the 10th anniversary of Independent Bookstore Day, the one-day book party held all across the country on the last Saturday in April every year to celebrate indie bookstores large and small. There’s no better time to show your local indie a little love—preferably by going to buy a book in person. But

‘A Litany for Survival’ is a 1978 poem by the American poet Audre Lorde (1934-92). Lorde was a self-described ‘Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet.’ In the poem, Lorde addresses other people who are voiceless and marginalised in society, observing that fear rules their lives but it is better to speak up and use one’s voice

Every month, all the major streaming services add a host of newly acquired (or just plain new) shows, movies, and documentaries into their ever-rotating libraries. So what’s a dedicated reader to watch? Well, whatever you want, of course, but the name of this website is Literary Hub, so we sort of have an angle. To

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘Let he who is without sin cast the first stone’, as the (slightly ungrammatically reworded) sentiment has it, or ‘Let him without sin cast the first stone’. This quotation can be traced back to Jesus, and to a specific incident described in the Gospel of St John, but what

April 27, 2023, 9:07am Neil Gaiman has his first full-length album coming out, a collaboration with Australian indie string quartet FourPlay called Signs of Life. Gaiman, obviously, has tried his hand at all kinds of writing—adapted myth, tv, comics—and has now written a record’s worth of prose and poetry set to music. As Gaiman told

Marriage is a key theme in literature, of course: a fact which need hardly surprise us when we reflect that many people spend the majority of their lives married to somebody else. Marriage also touches upon other prominent themes, including love, commitment, having children, lust, conflict, and even, in some cases, hatred. Below, we introduce

In college, I wrote a story set in Paris, inspired by my first visit to that city the summer prior. I felt very sophisticated typing out the names of streets and bridges I’d walked, and conjuring, with astonishing ease, the character of a lovesick Impressionist painter living in Montmartre and dabbing at his canvas. I

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘The Erl-King’ is a short story from The Bloody Chamber, a 1979 collection of feminist stories by the British writer Angela Carter (1940-92). In the story, a young girl wanders into a wood where a mysterious man of the forest seduces her; in his dwelling are cages containing birds

April 26, 2023, 10:58am Across the pond this morning, the good people at the Women’s Prize for Fiction—one of the literary world’s most high-profile and prestigious awards—announced the 2023 shortlist, which includes both former winners and three first-time novelists. This year’s shortlist was selected by a judging panel made up of broadcaster and writer Louise

‘The Tyger’ is one of the best-known poems of the poet and engraver William Blake (1757-1827). The poem, part of Blake’s Songs of Experience, is notable for its series of questions about the large and fearsome creature, the tiger. But it is also a poem built upon a sequence of powerful images and symbols. Indeed,

April 25, 2023, 11:00am Lloyd Devereux Richards’ debut thriller Stone Maidens was published in 2012, received by a largely indifferent world until Devereux Richards’ daughter Margueritte posted a TikTok about her dad, aged 74, last year. Nearly overnight, the mystery novel about an FBI forensic anthropologist, a serial killer, and some mysterious tribal artifacts, became