Lit Hub

Librarian leaves job after declining Melania Trump’s demand for a sword. Today in headlines I never thought anyone would I’d write, the head of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library has resigned after a spat with Melania Trump over an original Eisenhower sword s…

Librarians, standing up for historical swords everywhere.

Reading Rainbow is back, thanks to this famous internet librarian. After a 20 year hiatus, Reading Rainbow, the former PBS tentpole, is headed back to the airwaves. A reboot of the literacy loving children’s television show is coming to a (small) screen near…

One of our most iconic librarians is reviving a children’s lit classic.

How many books is a lot of books? How many is too many? As they say, one man’s collection is another man’s hoarded fire hazard, but reading this story—of a fancy Philadelphia townhouse stuffed to the rafters with 100,000 books—had me wondering where, ex…

It pains us to say: This might be too many books.

Any Coloradan with a cell phone will soon be able to access banned books for free. This #BannedBookWeek, we have a lot to lament. Though some book bans have been stalled or swatted down in the courts, stealthy removal campaigns continue. At home and abroad. But as Haylee May of C…

Thanks to the administrators at Anythink public library, Coloradans will soon have free access to a whole digital library of banned books.

This week’s news in Venn diagrams. Welcome, officially, to the first Friday of spooky season. The stores are full of candy for sale and those giant yard skeletons are starting to unfurl themselves. Hope you’re starting to feel…

Iconic librarians? The state of Colorado? Use these Venn diagrams to catch up on what you missed this week.

Here’s what’s making us happy this week. The theme this week is running-up-that-hill. Here at Lit Hub, we’re questing for answers. In the Kingdom of Hollownest, or ancient Egypt. We’re trying to keep the dream alive while that…

Hollow Knight, Party Down, and so much more! These things made the Lit Hub staff happy this week.

What It’s Like to Live a Queer Life in the United Arab Emirates I finally decided there was probably only the one band whose name was inspired by a lesbian sex position. But when I first read the headline “Scissor Sisters to perform in Abu Dhabi,” my initial th…

Gaar Adams chronicles queer life in Abu Dhabi, from concerts to karaoke bars.

Tending to the Garden of American Democracy is Hard and Thankless Work In Jerzy Kosinski’s 1971 novel Being There, a simple gardener named Chance is mistaken for a political guru and quickly wows the Washington D.C. power brokers and kingmakers. It’s a marvelous study…

@andrewervin.bsky.social looks for answers to (impossible) questions about American democracy in recent books by Luke Kemp and Richard Mabey.

What Mining for Water in the Andean Desert Reveals About “Green” Capitalism A high-­altitude desert plateau traverses Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile. I am on the Chilean side, in the passenger seat of a Jeep, along with two other researchers. The afternoon air is thin and b…

@triofrancos.bsky.social on the astonishing biodiversity in the Atacama Salt Flat and the environmental cost of green capitalism.

Cannibal Sororities and Butterfly Girl Gangs: October’s Best Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books This month’s TBR looks to be as varied as a bucket of candy after a solid night of trick-or-treating. There’s sour-sweet gummy worms (cyberpunk from Ken Liu and K.M Fajardo). The soulmate pairing o…

Tell Me Yours, I’ll Tell You Mine is on @literaryhub.bsky.social’s list of the best SFF out in October! Thank you, @zutsuit.bsky.social!

Alex Niemi on the Process of Translation and the Rhythm of Language I’ve known Alex Niemi since 2012, when we both started a graduate program in literary translation at the University of Iowa. We co-edited our program’s literary translation journal, Exchanges, and …

Lovely interview with Alex Niemi, translator of THE ENDLESS WEEK by Laura Vazquez, just up at @literaryhub.bsky.social . . . on "sonic suspense" and more!

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Such a fun and fascinating interview with Alex Niemi about her translation of a totally bonkers (and great!) new novel.

The Best Reviewed Books of the Week Featuring Lily King, Mariana Enriquez, Souvankham Thammavongsa, and more

Lily King’s Heart the Lover, Mariana Enriquez’s Somebody is Walking on Your Grave, and Souvankham Thammavongsa’s Pick a Color all feature among the best reviewed books of the week.

“Inhabiting the Poem.” Seven Poetry Collections to Read This October “What was the work the poet was demanding of me? It was to inhabit the poem, to live willingly in its world.” Those sentences were written by my late teacher Helen Vendler, and arrive in the second…

Christopher Spaide recommends new poetry collections coming in October by Gbenga Adesina, Cameron Awkward-Rich, and more.

Sarah Mesle on the Power of Picturing Your Desired Reader This first appeared in Lit Hub’s Craft of Writing newsletter—sign up here. Who is your girl? Where is she going? I learned these two questions from Project Runway, the fashion reality show, which I…

@sunsetandecho.bsky.social explores the power in imagining your ideal reader: “Who is your girl? Where is she going?”

Alex Niemi on the Process of Translation and the Rhythm of Language I’ve known Alex Niemi since 2012, when we both started a graduate program in literary translation at the University of Iowa. We co-edited our program’s literary translation journal, Exchanges, and …

“I found it hard to articulate the way a word could take up space in a body.” @sarahviren.bsky.social talks to Alex Niemi, translator of Laura Vazquez‘s The Endless Week.

Death and the Gardener My father was a gardener. Now he’s a garden. * I don’t know where to begin. Let that be the beginning. Yes, we’re talking about an end, of course, but where does the end begin? I think I wet myself…

“My father was a gardener. Now he’s a garden.” Read from Georgi Gospodinov’s novel Death and the Gardener, translated by Angela Rodel.

The Annotated Nightstand: What Anton Hur Is Reading Now, and Next Considering the spooky time of year has begun (which Drew Broussard and I spoke about here at the Lit Hub Podcast!), Bora Chung’s Midnight Timetable feels apt as a book to kick off the season. Anto…

What’s on @antonhur.com’s TBR? Books by Han Kang, Irenosen Okojie, Siang Lu, and more!

5 Reviews You Need to Read This Week Our bindle of brilliant reviews this week includes Christian Lorentzen on Thomas Pynchon’s Shadow Ticket, Grace Byron on Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares’ If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies, Jeet…

“A magnificent and lovable work—both page-turning and coolly visionary.” 5 book reviews you need to read this week.

Someone’s at Casey’s cabin door… should she let them in? Enter now for a chance to win an audiobook copy of THE INTRUDER, narrated by Patricia Santomasso, Tina Wolstencroft, and Joe Hempel. [Sponsored] crimereads.com/the-intruder...

Funeral For a Postponed Death: On Burying Argentina’s Disappeared Translation by Megan McDowell In the middle of August 2011, I received an email from my colleague and friend Marta Dillon. It was an invitation to the burial of Marta Taboada, her mother, who had b…

“How beautiful cemeteries are…. Where the name and the date remain, a voice that says: I was here, now I’m gone.” Mariana Enriquez on burying Argentina’s disappeared.
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A View with a Room: How Poetry Can Save the Human Brain I can’t write. It’s been over a year since I wrote a poem or anything at all, really, and this is not normal for me; I am always always writing. I’ve written my way through the hardest parts of my …

Kate Colby on drawing inspiration from Edward Hopper’s Cape Cod Morning and how poetry can save the human brain.

Am I the Asshole For Being Sick to Death of All the Mediocre Speculative Fiction Out There? Hello there, dear friends! It’s once again time for Am I the Literary Asshole?, the advice column that’s kind of like your drunk uncle at a wedding who keeps forgetting that he already asked you th…

Forget literary assholes. Are you the “literary shithead” if you’re sick of speculative fiction? @kristenarnett.bsky.social answers this question and more!

Re(se)a(r)ching For Connection: Navigating the Fact and Fiction of Alien Abduction Stories Five years ago, my partner gave me an incredible birthday present—a digital folder full of scanned documents.  Sound boring? It was anything but. The files came from the University of New Hampshire…

“It’s in trying to reach beyond our limited selves that we are, I believe, most human.” @ilanaslightly.bsky.social on the importance of research in navigating the fact and fiction of alien abduction stories.

Yiming Ma on the Future of Censorship Fiction writer Yiming Ma joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss his new novel These Memories Do Not Belong To Us. Ma, who was born in Shanghai and visited China frequentl…

Fiction writer Yiming Ma joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and
@sugi.bsky.social to discuss his new novel These Memories Do Not Belong To Us and how terrifyingly easy it can be to live in a society in which censorship is the default.
@literaryhub.bsky.social
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Inside China’s New Wave of Conceptually Innovative Bookstores Prior to 2020, the city of Hong Kong had over one hundred bookstores, including several major chains. But the national security law passed on the heels of large demonstrations and the COVID-19 pand…

Look inside the conceptually innovative spaces that house China’s new wave of bookstores.

Lily King on Campus Novels, Time Jumps, and Having Fun While Writing Writer and Books Are Magic bookstore owner Emma Straub spoke with Lily King about her new book, Heart the Lover (out now with Grove), smart characters, time jumps, and the utterly exhilarating proc…

@emmastraub.bsky.social talks to Lily King about campus novels, time jumps, and her new book, Heart the Lover.

Investigators have been asked to look into the death of Hunter S. Thompson. The death by suicide of the late, great Hunter S. Thompson in 2005, at the age of 67, is to be reexamined by the Colorado Bureau of Investigation after a request from his widow, Anita. According to…

Hunter S. Thompson’s widow, Anita, has asked the Colorado Bureau of Investigation to look into his death.

The Cartographer of Absences Not a night goes by when I don’t forget how one sleeps. My doctor warned me: Insomnia is just another name for depression. The symptoms have been accumulating for quite some time: After the lack of…

“Not a night goes by when I don’t forget how one sleeps. My doctor warned me: Insomnia is just another name for depression.” Read from Mia Couto’s novel The Cartographer of Absences, translated by David Brookshaw.