Yesterday afternoon, the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Colson Whitehead (The Underground Railroad, The Nickel Boys) announced that he would no longer be giving the commencement address at University of Massachusetts Amherst on May 18, citing the administration’s decision to call the police on campus protesters. “I was looking forward to speaking next week at UMass Amherst,” Whitehead wrote on the social network Bluesky. “But calling the cops on peaceful protesters is a shameful act. I have to withdraw as your commencement speaker. I give all my best wishes and congratulations ..read more

Images from Montclair Film and Bernard Gotfryd Ben Stiller is set to play writer Norman Mailer alongside Oscar-nominated-and-robbed actor Colin Farrell in the upcoming Belly of The Beast. The movie is set to be directed by Andrew Haigh of All of Us Strangers fame, and co-adapted by Haigh and Alexis Jolly, from the book Jack and Norman by academic and literary critic Jerome Loving. The true crime story follows Mailer’s connection with Jack Henry Abbott, an inmate convicted for a string of crimes in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. Mailer helped Abbott become a minor literary star, publish a priso ..read more

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: “Break it Down” by Lydia Davis I often have a particular experience reading a Lydia Davis story. It’s hard to explain, but it’s as though she’s put her finger in a body of water, say a lake, and stirred, and then the ripples have taken over the ..read more

TODAY: In 1849, The Astor Place Riot takes place in Manhattan over a dispute between two Shakespearean actors, the American Edwin Forrest and the Englishman William Macready. Over 20 people are killed.  “I began searching for the memories of people of color—migrant, immigrant, enslaved, and native people buried and forgotten.” Karen Tei Yamashita on finding stories in the soil. | Lit Hub Craft Why isn’t mom in the photo? Ellen O’Connell Whittet considers the Victorian practice of removing mothers from portraits. | Lit Hub History Jacob Kushner on the far-right serial killers who robbed ..read more

Saturday was a gloriously beautiful spring day in Chicago, and as I wandered into the “Liberation Zone” which has taken over DePaul University’s quad, a kind lady asked me if I would like some lunch. I declined because I was headed to a BBQ in a couple of hours, but I took her up on some coffee, thanked her, and asked her if she was affiliated with the Vincentian Catholic university. “No,” she told. “I’m just Palestinian.” I recognized her from previous visits to that particular Gaza Solidarity Encampment, one of four I have visited over the last few weeks: Columbia University’s (where, as a ..read more

Photo by Miria-Sabina Maciągiewicz. As Emerson said to Whitman: “I greet you at the beginning of a great career, which yet must have had a long foreground somewhere, for such a start.” The same words my editor said to me when I published my first novel in—good God—1982! Although I have to confess—Emerson to Whitman aside—the sentiment struck me even then as rather hyperbolic. It strikes me now as ill-timed. Forty years later, I’m pretty sure I’m still at the start of this career—and whether it is a great career or not remains to be determined. This is because, as you’ve no doubt already disco ..read more

When I was conducting my research for my novel A Revolver to Carry at Night, I immersed myself in the correspondence, biographies, and works of Vera and Vladimir Nabokov’s biographies. It was in Nabokov’s poetic memoir, Speak, Memory, that I discovered the story that inspired Lolita, and began to understand Nabokov’s relationship with his novel and its subject matter. Vladimir Nabokov’s parents used to spend their summer vacations in Vyra, in a mansion with a large garden on the outskirts of St. Petersburg. After one of those late, long, hearty lunches, so characteristic of wealthy Russians ..read more

During a holiday dinner a few years ago, the conversation turned to my boobs. No one in the family thought I should call them Bert and Ernie. My mother suggested Thelma and Louise; my daughter recommended her favorite comedians, Tina and Amy; my wife advocated Venus and Serena. My father, then 77, and my son, 22, exchanged eye rolls. They were new, these silicone aliens, and they didn’t feel female or even human. Nature gave me my first pair, while a high-ranking plastic surgeon had installed these impostors. When I stood naked in front of a mirror, I thought: the rack on that woman looks pre ..read more

This first appeared in Lit Hub’s Craft of Writing newsletter—sign up here. In the Peace and Justice Memorial Center in Montgomery, Alabama, we witness an immense wall shelved with over 800 one-gallon glass jars, each filled with soil from a site of an American lynching. The soil in these jars, variegated in color—jet black to gray, volcanic red to mustard yellow—is drenched in the blood and ash of racial violence. Each jar is inscribed with a name, date, and place. On many, the site is known; names unknown. In 1912, sociologist Monroe Work began to publish a series of 66 lynching re ..read more

Colm Tóibín’s Long Island, Sathnam Sanghera’s Empireworld, and Kaliane Bradley’s The Ministry of Time all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. Brought to you by Book Marks, Lit Hub’s home for book reviews. * Fiction 1. Long Island by Colm Tóibín (Scribner) 9 Rave • 2 Positive • 1 Mixed “The characters in Long Island are constantly cautioning themselves not to say anything, for fear of upsetting that fine balance that exists in intimacy as much as in community. But not saying is an act with consequences, too—one that Tóibín, a master of his art, exploits to exquisite effect at ..read more