I came relatively late to Alice Munro.  Despite being a bookish Canadian with pretensions of being a writer, I resisted invitations and entreatments alike to read anything by—so I was told—our version of Chekhov. The reason for this reluctance is not complicated, and is frankly embarrassing in retrospect: Alice Munro was my mother’s favorite writer. ...

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...

Billions of cicadas are about to hatch this spring and summer, as both the 13- and 17-year cicada broods converge in one historic emergence. This overlap between broods happens just once ever 221 years, which makes it a much rarer natural phenomenon than the North American solar eclipse earlier this year—though I suspect fewer people are traveling to...

The city center of Glasgow, Scotland—that iron-and-glass-forged, cobblestoned fortress of a hilly, rainy, foggy metropolis—is bisected by the dueling high streets of Buchanan and Sauchiehall. There are any number of landmarks to draw your attention if ambling down either of these bustling thoroughfares as the last squibs of Caledonian light fight their...

TODAY: Remembering Alice Munro.  The great Alice Munro has died. We remember her life and work. | Lit Hub “True freedom may lie in the art that can express, deeply embedded in ordinary family life, the political attachments that shape and misshape that life.” Wendy Doniger on Amit Chaudhuri’s Freedom Song. | Lit Hub Criticism “I’m human, I’m working...

When the French writer Annie Ernaux delivered her lecture upon receiving the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature, the announcement cited the “the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements, and collective restraints of personal memory.” Almost a year earlier, the curator and writer Lou Stoppard had been noticing the Ernaux...