According to the powers that be (er, apparently according to Dan Wickett of the Emerging Writers Network), May is Short Story Month. To celebrate, for the second year in a row, the Literary Hub staff will be recommending a single short story, free* to read online, every (work) day of the month. Why not read along with us? Today, we recommend: “The...

TODAY: In 1925, Virginia Woolf’s novel Mrs Dalloway is published.   Teddy Wayne asks Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Noé Álvarez, Anna Dorn, and more authors 7 burning questions. | Lit Hub Craft Hari Kunzru, Freud, System of a Down, and more! These 26 new books are out today. | Lit Hub Reading Lists “Remember that there’s nothing you can say to...

The Critic and Her Publics is a live interview series that asks the best and most prominent critics working today to perform criticism on the spot, on an object they’ve never seen before. It’s a glimpse into brilliant minds at work, performing their thinking, taking risks, and making spontaneous judgments, which are sometimes right and sometimes wrong....

The Lit Hub Author Questionnaire is a monthly interview featuring seven questions for five authors with new books. This month we talk to: * Noé Álvarez (Accordion Eulogies: A Memoir of Music, Migration, and Mexico) Anna Dorn (Perfume & Pain) Abby Geni (The Body Farm) Aimee Nezhukumatathil (Bite by Bite: Nourishments and Jamborees) Lee...

At a recent visit to the doctor, I could hear “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” long before I could see its musicians. It was a jaunty rendition, with synth beats and a full-sized xylophone echoing off the long corridor I had to walk to reception. I suppose it did exactly what it was meant to do: take my mind momentarily off my reason for being there. By...

Claire Messud’s new novel, This Strange Eventful History, is both spacious and distilled, spanning seven decades and multiple continents, told from five points of view in one family, dazzling us with echoing themes, unraveling secrets, and rolling crescendos that peak in a series of finales. The narrative is based on her own family history, and the...