Literary Hub

A daily literary website highlighting the best in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and criticism.

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Under apartheid, publishing radical books was an act of resistance. Ravan Press, (founded in 1972 by Peter Randall and others) amplified banned voices, Black Consciousness writers, and critical texts that commercial publishers wouldn’t touch.

Ravan published the first novels by authors like J.M. Coetzee and Miriam Tlali, often risking raids and censorship to do so. Its work was one part of a broader liberation struggle across Southern Africa, building political awareness from the grassroots up.

See more primary sources in the Struggles for Freedom: Southern Africa collection on JSTOR, with an emphasis on materials from Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe.

Image: Books for Workers from Ravan Press. January 1, 1984. Digital Innovation South Africa.

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[when faces called flowers float out of the ground] by e.e. cummings

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Because we know you definitely need more titles on your TBR. Read the lists here.

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Everything All at Once by Oliver Baez Bendorf

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Everyone has their process

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Blood On the Page: On Jane Austen’s Period Drama

Mashing up Jane Austen’s fiction with zombies, erotica, or extraterrestrials has become so common in pop culture that such stuff may no long

Mashing up Jane Austen’s fiction with zombies, erotica, or extraterrestrials has become so common in pop culture that such stuff may no longer raise an eyebrow. Pride & Prejudice & Zombies was, and feels, so very ten years ago. But who could have known then that the most fresh, funny, and moving mash-up was yet to come—and that it would take menstruation as its most unlikely subject? Jane Austen’s Period Drama, Julia Aks and Steven Pinder’s Oscar-nominated (and brilliant) short live action film, turns on a clever pun on the word “period.” The 13-minute film—recently made available to viewers on YouTube—also captured headlines when Emma Thompson signed on as its “Executive Menstrual Adviser.” Jane Austen’s Period Drama has emerged as a serious contender for the Academy Award.

Devoney Looser explores 19th-century attitudes about menstruation through Jane Austen’s Period Drama, the Oscar-nominated short. 

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Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights is a Deranged, Half-Assed Bodice-Ripper That Entirely Misses the Point

I did not quite finish my umpteenth read of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights prior to seeing Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights. Ever the o

“Imagine a wealthy Oxbridge don giving their teenager a blank check for their Brontë birthday bash and you might begin to grasp the vision.” Emily Van Duyne reviews Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights.

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A brief literary history of The Muppet Show.

Last week on a Disney+ account near you, Seth Rogen—the hardest working man in show biz—announced the return of the Kerm. A one-off Muppet S

Brittany Allen chronicles the literary history of The Muppets, from A Christmas Carol to Treasure Island and beyond.

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In our Letters from Minnesota series, writers, organizers, and activists on the ground in Minnesota bear witness to ICE and American authoritarianism. Today, read dispatches from Kao Kalia Yang on preparing for the worst with her children, Jim Moore on echoes of protests past, and Katherine Packert Burke on “why we will win.”

Letter From Minnesota: We Are Going to Win

Each morning, I get a Signal message counting up how many days our city has been occupied. It bears information, reminders for new members.

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In our Letters from Minnesota series, writers, organizers, and activists on the ground in Minnesota bear witness to ICE and American authoritarianism. Today, read dispatches from Kao Kalia Yang on preparing for the worst with her children, Jim Moore on echoes of protests past, and Katherine Packert Burke on “why we will win.”

Letter From Minnesota: We Are Going to Win

Each morning, I get a Signal message counting up how many days our city has been occupied. It bears information, reminders for new members.

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“Everything We Do Matters.” Minneapolis’s Moon Palace Books is a Hub For Anti-ICE Resistance

Angela Schwesnedl from Moon Palace Books in Minneapolis picked up my phone call on Saturday almost two hours to the minute after Alex Pretti

James Folta talks to Minneapolis bookseller Angela Schwesnedl:

“Angela Schwesnedl from Moon Palace Books in Minneapolis picked up my phone call on Saturday almost two hours to the minute after Alex Pretti was murdered in the street by ICE officers.

‘If you haven’t seen the video, don’t,’ she told me. ‘It’s an execution.’

We had made a plan the day before to talk about Friday’s huge ICE Out protest, march, and general strike against the federal occupation, but Alex Pretti was dead, and we began in somber sadness. The early reports of the murder would continue to filter out to us, to me hunched in a friend’s small office in New York while taking notes, and to her in the back of a Minneapolis store while managing diaper distribution.”

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Letter From Minnesota: Can You Hear Us, America?

Since early December of last year, thousands of ICE officers have streamed into Minnesota to carry out a violent and grossly unconstitutiona

Dobby Gibson writes a letter from Minnesota:

“We wear whistles now. Mine is bright yellow and plastic and weighs barely enough to dangle from its string. I carry it in my pocket. Others wear theirs like an amulet. Under any other circumstance, my whistle would be mistaken for a Christmas-tree ornament, a birthday-party favor, or a second-hand Fisher-Price toy. It looks amateur, but the noise it makes is contractor grade.

The neighbors all carry one. Some whistles are clearly brand-new—an overnight Amazon Prime purchase—others a leftover from a long-ago summer lifeguard job. In blaze-orange safety vests and down puffers, we line the streets around our schools each morning and afternoon, standing watch for ICE caravans, little plumes of frozen breath rising from beneath our hoods.”

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Why Heated Rivalry is the Perfect Adaptation of the Romance Novel’s Strict Conventions

There is something very fitting about the fact that a gay hockey romance has been one of the biggest cultural phenomena to mark the closing

Anne Margaret Castro explains why Heated Rivalry is the perfect romance novel adaptation. 

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Ode to Mitski by William Fargason

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This year at Literary Hub, we published the tenth iteration of a fan favorite end of year list: the best book covers of the year, as chosen by some of our favorite book cover designers. When we realized we had a decade of data about the best book covers, we knew what we needed to do. These are the 75 best ranked book covers of the decade, because we know you live for the aesthetic.

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Is Artistic Ego a Faustian Bargain? Karl Ove Knausgaard on Plot, Narcissism, and His New Novel

The moral fulcrum of Christopher Marlowe’s The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, in which a scholar gains knowledge

“‘Can you be a good writer and a good person?’ he muses into his Zoom camera, vaping every few seconds. ‘Is that possible to combine? Can you be a good writer and a good father?’”

Eric Olson profiles Karl Ove Knausgaard, author of The School of Night.