Novelist, poet, and educator Heba Abu Nada, a beloved figure in the Palestinian literary community and the author of Oxygen is Not for the Dead, was killed in her home south of Gaza City by an Israeli airstrike on Friday. She was thirty-two years old.

In her final tweet, written in Arabic on October 8, the author wrote: “Gaza’s night is dark apart from the glow of rockets, quiet apart from the sound of the bombs, terrifying apart from the comfort of prayer, black apart from the light of the martyrs. Good night, Gaza.”

Abu Nada was educated at Islamic University, Gaza, where she was awarded a bachelor’s degree of biochemistry. She went on to received a master’s degree in clinical nutrition from Al-Azhar University, Gaza. In 2017, Abu Nada won the Sharjah Award for Arab Creativity for Oxygen is Not for the Dead.

This is one of poetry and novelist Heba Abu Nada interviews. She is reciting one of her poems. Heartbreaking. pic.twitter.com/ZpcWt2KgQg

— Abdalhadi Alijla عبد الهادي العجلة (@alijla2021) October 21, 2023

Earlier today, the British-born Cypriot poet, writer, publisher Anthony Anaxagorou reported that the following were Abu Nada’s last words, penned just before her death:

We find ourselves in an indescribable state of bliss amidst the chaos. Amidst the ruins, a new city emerges—a testament to our resilience. Cries of pain echo through the air, mingling with the blood-stained garments of doctors. Teachers, despite their grievances, embrace their little pupils, while families display unwavering strength in the face of adversity.

We’re nearing the end of October, and that can mean many things to many a person: that you really need to figure out what costume you’re going to wear to that party because you’ve put it off all month; that it’s a special time to remember that all things live and die, like leaves in autumn ( or, more accurately, change, as on that most misunderstood of Tarot cards); that it’s a special time to try to forget the political chaos of this month if possible; or many other things. No matter what you’re deciding, remembering, or trying to no longer remember, one thing is constant: that there are exciting, excellent new books to check out today.

If you need a moment to yourself amidst it all, I suggest you choose to spend it with one of the intriguing offerings below, which include a memoiristic collection from Hilary Mantel; a series of powerful biographies about writers, critics, and musicians of all kinds; new fiction from Jesmyn Ward, K-Ming Chang, Tim O’Brien, and many other beloved and new writers; poetry collections about addiction and poets’ favorite works; and much, much more. I hope you’ll add one—or many—of these to your ever-growing lists!

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Jesmyn Ward, Let Us Descend
(Scribner)

“Imaginative….Combining magical realism with historical fiction, two-time National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward’s fourth novel tells the story of Annis, an enslaved girl in the antebellum South….To survive, she must tap into the mystical in this heart-wrenching narrative of the American South in the age of slavery.”
–Time

K-Ming Chang, Organ Meats
(One World)

“Organ Meats is one of those rare novels that immediately seizes your attention because of its ferocity, its rawness, and its sheer poetic brilliance. A haunting and feverish exploration of a very complex (and somewhat disturbing) friendship, I read this book wide eyed with such wonder….Certainly one of the most inventive and visceral novelists I’ve encountered in quite some time, K-Ming Chang’s imagination is as rich as it is boundless.”
–Eric LaRocca

Sandra Newman, Julia
(Mariner)

“Newman delivers a provocative feminist retelling of George Orwell’s 1984….Julia’s narrative voice is refreshingly fearless as she navigates her way around the Party’s nefarious thought policing, and a wicked plot twist spins the original narrative on its ear. Newman adds a fresh coat of menacing gray to Orwell’s gloomy world.”
–Publishers Weekly

Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self: A Life in Writing
(Holt)

“Warm, human, unfailingly engaging, this lovely collection should appeal widely. As usual, [Mantel] writes like a dream.”
–Library Journal

Adam Sisman, The Secret Life of John Le Carré
(Harper)

“Page-turning….Adam Sisman completes the task of showing us who [John le Carré] was—a minor spy who became a major novelist, whose most important agents in the field were the women he needed to love and then betray….The Secret Life of John le Carré is not merely the conclusive homage to a compulsively fascinating character, but an insightful study into the biographical process itself. Even David Cornwell, the man who actually was John le Carré, would have saluted him.”
–Nicholas Shakespeare

Matt Singer, Opposable Thumbs: How Siskel & Ebert Changed Movies Forever
(Putnam)

“[A] knowledgeable, deeply entertaining history of their partnership…that it’s always expansive, never reductive. We get so much here–a dual portrait of two big personalities at war with one another both as critics and as men, a history of the invention and reinvention of a seminal TV series, and a deep sense of the abiding love for movies that coursed through their work and that courses through Matt Singer’s.”
–Mark Harris

Tim O’Brien, America Fantastica
(Mariner)

“Hunter S. Thompson meets Sacha Baron Cohen in this amusing and alarming road trip to the center of America’s mendacious heart….O’Brien keeps everything afloat on a cloud of pure gonzo bliss. If this is indeed the author’s valedictory novel, he’s bowing out with a star-spangled bang.”
–Publishers Weekly

Roz Chast, I Must Be Dreaming
(Bloomsbury)

“I Must Be Dreaming is Roz Chast at her chastiest, serving up cartoons direct from the source of her apparently vintage chintz-upholstered unconscious. They reduced me repeatedly to spasms of laugh-crying. Indeed, I imagine Freud and Jung are not only spinning in their graves right now, they are peeing their pants.”
–Alison Bechdel

Lọlá Ákínmádé Åkerström, Everything Is Not Enough
(William Morrow)

“Everything is Not Enough presents a fascinating and complex kaleidoscope of women’s lives in Sweden, asking crucial questions around career, love, family, and the definition of success. There are no easy answers in this book—the characters are real, subtle and surprising and you root for them the whole way through.”
–Kathy Wang

Kaveh Akbar (editor), Paige Lewis (editor), Another Last Call: Poems on Addiction and Deliverance
(Sarabande Books)

“Why do I feel so at home among the poems and poets of Another Last Call: Poems on Addiction & Deliverance? There is nothing more human, haunted, humbling, and bottom line, than the desire that fuels addiction and recovery—and poetry. In reading this brilliant anthology, I feel less alone. I’ve found my people.”
–Diane Seuss

JJJJJerome Ellis, Aster of Ceremonies: Poems
(Milkweed)

“JJJJJerome Ellis’s Aster of Ceremonies blows my mind, and blows the lids off of any preconceptions about what poetry can make possible. With each movement, innovation, insight, and deepening—with each page—we are invited into ceremony: into a greenhouse of gratitude, repetition, remembering, and music. Ellis expertly rearranges sound, perspective, ecology, and history into a priceless song.”
–Ama Codjoe

Margaret Renkl, The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year
(Spiegel & Grau)

“Luminous….Elegant, lucid essays follow the changing seasons, Renkl musing on the migratory and nesting patterns of birds, the encroaching effects of climate change, her own evolving family structure, and the incremental shifts of flora, fauna, and light….The Comfort of Crows celebrates the beauty and durability of nature’s age-old cycles and the habits of wild creatures, and it urges human beings to care for these same creatures—before some of them disappear altogether.”
–Shelf Awareness

Mary Beard, Emperor of Rome: Ruling the Ancient World
(Liveright)

“Beard focuses on the details of how emperors lived, governed, traveled, dined, and amused themselves….Beard is deft in her exploration of imperial bureaucracy, showing how it dealt with an avalanche of paperwork from distant officials, cities, military leaders, and individuals in an era with no postal service. Emperors’ deaths, natural or otherwise, led to fascinating consequences.”
–Kirkus Reviews

Erin Belieu (editor), Carl Phillips (editor), Personal Best: Makers on Their Poems That Matter Most
(Copper Canyon Press)

“This anthology from Copper Canyon Press sits in my book stack on the breakfast bar, screaming my name. It marries many of my bookish passions: poetry, prose by poets, and craft essays. Highlighting writers I admire like Kaveh Akbar, Victoria Chang, Tarfia Faizullah, Donika Kelly, Ada Limón, Airea D. Matthews, Jake Skeets, Danez Smith, and Ocean Vuong, I can’t wait to inhale this cover to cover and learn which works poets consider their personal best.”
–Book Riot

Staci Robinson, Tupac Shakur: The Authorized Biography
(Crown Publishing Group)

“[A] riveting account….Robinson [sets] out a faithful and detailed portrait of an artist dedicated to helping ‘others achieve freedom from oppression.’ Enriched by invaluable excerpts from the rapper’s notebooks and sketch pads, this will have hip-hop devotees enthralled.”
–Kirkus Reviews

Philip Norman, George Harrison: The Reluctant Beatle
(Scribner)

“The author of biographies of John Lennon and Paul McCartney turns his attention to George Harrison (1943–2001)….Norman knows his subject and the soulful torments Harrison endured. The quiet Beatle turns out to have feet of clay—a surprise to some, perhaps…..A well-informed…biography of an enigmatic musician.”
–Kirkus Reviews

Thurston Moore, Sonic Life: A Memoir
(Doubleday)

“Thurston Moore has always been a great artist, expansive in his knowledge of, and commitment to, new sounds and visions. Now, added to his expert musicianship, are his very real gifts as a memoirist and cultural historian. Filled with wonderful insights about the New York-based cultural landscape that made him, Moore’s Sonic Life is essential reading—a moving meditation by a creative force.”
–Hilton Als

Jeanette Winterson, Night Side of the River: Ghost Stories
(Atlantic Monthly Press)

“A bewitching collection for readers of horror and mystery, with just the right twists.”
–Booklist

Karma Brown, What Wild Women Do
(Dutton)

“As inspiring as it is compelling, What Wild Women Do is a poignant journey into the hearts of two women yearning to take up more space in the world. Karma Brown has offered a gift to the seeker, the treasure hunter, in all of us.”
–Katie Gutierrez

Dwight Garner, The Upstairs Delicatessen: On Eating, Reading, Reading about Eating, and Eating While Reading
(FSG)

“The phrase ‘upstairs delicatessen’ was coined by Beat critic Seymour Krim to describe memory, and Garner raids his to serve up a feast of vivid recollections personal and literary….All converges in this zesty concoction of funny and poignant autobiographical anecdotes, incisive and wide-ranging reflections, and striking, often hilarious quotes from a literary smorgasbord.”
–Booklist

Sarah Lohman, Endangered Eating: America’s Vanishing Foods
(Norton)

“Sarah Lohman sheds light on the urgency of safeguarding Indigenous culinary customs through her tales of traversing America in search of endangered foods. In Endangered Eating she highlights the influence of colonization upon foodways, and also advocates for the localization of food systems and greater support for food producers and community organizations.”
–Liza Greene

Dann McDorman, West Heart Kill
(Knopf)

“West Heart Kill is a true unicorn: a thoroughly original suspense novel that hops across elements of the genre—spot-on historical fiction and a diabolical locked-room mystery interspersed with a fascinating primer on the history of the form—while always being tremendous fun to read.”
–Chris Pavone

Eliot A. Cohen, The Hollow Crown: Shakespeare on How Leaders Rise, Rule, and Fall
(Basic Books)

“[Cohen’s] brilliant meditation on power and statecraft, The Hollow Crown, is a double helix; he takes us deep into Shakespeare’s plays and emerges with vivid portraits of our modern political figures. In Cohen’s reading, Shakespeare becomes a kind of Elizabethan Machiavelli—a man who observes power and politics with such a nuanced and unsentimental eye that his work is timeless. Cohen finds some astonishing Shakespearean moments on the American political stage.”
–David Ignatius

John Guy, Julia Fox, Hunting the Falcon: Henry VIII, Anne Bolelyn, and the Marriage that Shook Europe
(Harper)

“Better than Wolf Hall because it’s all true. The authors’ extraordinary scholarship in every possible historical source, as well as the vibrancy of their writing, delivers the seemingly impossible: a genuinely fresh interpretation of the marriage that produced Protestant England and the greatest of all the British monarchs, Elizabeth I. With a paranoiac court where mild flirtation could lead to torture and disembowelment, the story still has the power to shock.”
–Andrew Roberts

Adam Frank, The Little Book of Aliens
(Harper)

“From the details of the origins of life on Earth, to the physics (and hypothetical future physics) of interstellar travel, The Little Book of Aliens is a comprehensive exploration of the seemingly limitless potential of intelligent life, human and beyond. Frank’s book is science writing at its best, revealing the awe-inspiring capacity of science to help us understand, and navigate, the universe.”
–Annaka Harris

Alberto Toscano, Late Fascism: Race, Capitalism and the Politics of Crisis
(Verso)

“There are no unearned claims here. Rather, one feels that Toscano has thought through the political stakes of every single sentence in this crucial book. Late Fascism is painstaking in accounting for, differentiating, and connecting the many historical contexts and iterations of fascism—from the onset of colonial modernity, through the mid-twentieth century, to the present day.”
–Jordy Rosenberg

The winners of the 2023 Hugo Awards—one of science fiction and fantasy’s most prestigious awards, decided by the popular vote of WorldCon members—were presented this weekend at the 81st WorldCon in Chengdu, China. Here are the winners in the literary categories:

Best Novel: Nettle & Bone, by T. Kingfisher (Tor Books)

Best Novella: Where the Drowned Girls Go, by Seanan McGuire (Tordotcom)

Best Novelette: “The Space-Time Painter,” by Hai Ya (Galaxy’s Edge, April 2022)

Best Short Story: “Rabbit Test,” by Samantha Mills (Uncanny Magazine, November-December 2022)

Best Series: Children of Time Series, by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Pan Macmillan/Orbit)

Best Graphic Story or Comic: Cyberpunk 2077: Big City Dreams, by Bartosz Sztybor, Filipe Andrade, Alessio Fioriniello, Roman Titov, Krzysztof Ostrowski (Dark Horse Books)

Best Related Work: Terry Pratchett: A Life With Footnotes, by Rob Wilkins (Doubleday)

Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book (presented by the World Science Fiction Society): Akata Woman (The Nsibidi Scripts), by Nnedi Okorafor (Viking Books for Young Readers)

Astounding Award for Best New Writer (presented by Dell Magazines): Travis Baldree

You can read the full list of winners and finalists here. 

The leaves are amassing, the skeletons are out, and enormous bags of candy fill the grocery store aisles and threaten to spill their chocolates right into your mouth, through absolutely no fault of your own. Yep, it’s officially spooky season. But if you still need some help getting into the holiday spirit (or just want to kill some zombies time at work this week), Literary Hub is here to help, with a few of our staff’s very favorite spooky short stories—all of which are available courtesy of that lurking transient evil you know as the internet. Consider it a literary version of a scary movie marathon. Our choices range from horror to science fiction to realism, from straight-up frightening to the kind of unsettling that just sticks around the rest of the day like the smell of smoke. Spookiness, after all, is in the eye of the beholder.

So without any further ado, here are 20 spooky stories that you can read online for free this week, or anytime. (For even more short story recommendations from the Literary Hub staff, check out our One Great Short Story series.) And of course, this list is not meant to be definitive, so please feel free to add your own favorites in the comments—when it comes to scaring ourselves silly, more is always more.

Ray Bradbury, “The Veldt” (Saturday Evening Post, 1950)

“George, I wish you’d look at the nursery.”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, then.”

“I just want you to look at it, is all, or call a psychologist in to look at it.”

“What would a psychologist want with a nursery?”

“You know very well what he’d want.” His wife paused in the middle of the kitchen and watched the stove busy humming to itself, making supper for four.

“It’s just that the nursery is different now than it was.”

“All right, let’s have a look.”

Tananarive Due, “The Wishing Pool” (Uncanny Magazine, 2021)

Joy nearly got lost on the root-knotted red dirt path off of Highway 99, losing sight of the gaps between the live oaks and Spanish moss that fanned across her hood and windows like fingertips. Driving back to her family’s cabin twenty years later reminded her that the woods had rarely been restful for her. Once, Dad had made her play outside instead of sitting on the couch with her Virginia Hamilton books, and she’d stepped in an anthill up to her shin. She howled so loudly from the vicious stinging that Dad and Mom heard her all the way from the lake, and when they reached her they expected to find her half dead. She’d never forgotten that wild, frightened look in their eyes. No, Joy did not like the woods.

Samanta Schweblin, tr. Megan McDowell, “Headlights” (2019)

When she reaches the road, Felicity understands her fate. He has not waited for her, and, as if the past were a tangible thing, she thinks she can still see the weak reddish glow of the car’s taillights fading on the horizon. In the flat darkness of the countryside, there is only disappointment, a wedding dress, and a bathroom she shouldn’t have taken so long in.

Joyce Carol Oates, “Zombie,” (The New Yorker, 1994)

My name is Q.P., and I am twenty-nine years old, three months.

I see my probation officer, Mr. T., Thursdays, 10 a.m., and my therapist, Dr. E., Mondays and Thursdays, 4:30 p.m.; my group-therapy session with Dr. B. is Tuesdays, 7-8:30 p.m.

I am a registered student at Dale County Business College, where I am enrolled in two three-credit courses for the spring semester: Introduction to Accounting and Computer Graphics.

My residence is 118 Church Street, Mount Vernon, Michigan. Which is close by the State University campus. Seven miles from Dale but no inconvenience for me, I have my van.

Mariana Enríquez, tr. Megan McDowell, “Julie,” Astra (2022)

She came from the United States straight to my house in Buenos Aires—they didn’t want her in some hotel while they looked for an apartment to rent. My gringa cousin, Julie: she’d been born in Argentina, but when she was two, her parents—my aunt and uncle—had migrated to the States. They settled in Vermont: my uncle worked at Boeing, and my aunt—my dad’s sister—birthed children, decorated the house, and secretly held spiritist meetings in her beautiful, spacious living room. Rich blond Latinos of German heritage: their neighbors didn’t really know how to place them, since they came from South America but their last name was Meyer. Even so, their firstborn’s features betrayed the infiltrated strain of Native blood that came from my Indigenous grandmother: Julie had the dark dead eyes of a rat, untamable hair always standing on end, skin the color of wet sand. I’m pretty sure my aunt even started telling people she was adopted. My dad got so mad when he heard that rumor that he stopped writing and calling his sister for at least a year. 

Nathaniel Hawthorne, “Young Goodman Brown” (1835)

Young Goodman Brown came forth at sunset, into the street of Salem village, but put his head back, after crossing the threshold, to exchange a parting kiss with his young wife. And Faith, as the wife was aptly named, thrust her own pretty head into the street, letting the wind play with the pink ribbons of her cap, while she called to Goodman Brown.

Nalo Hopkinson, “Left Foot, Right” (2014)

“Allyou have this in a size nine?” Jenna puts the shiny red patent shoe down on the counter. Well, it used to be shiny. She’s been wearing it everywhere, and now it’s dulled by dust. It’s the left side of a high-heeled pump, pointy-toed, with large shiny fake rhinestones decorating the toe box. Each stone is a different size and colour, in a different cheap plastic setting. The red veneer has stripped off the heel of the shoe. It curls up off the white plastic heel base in strips. Jenna’s heart clenches. It’s exactly the kind of tacky, blinged-out accessory that Zuleika loves—loved—to wear.

Robert Coover, “The Babysitter” (2014)

She arrives at 7:40, ten minutes late, but the children, Jimmy and Bitsy, are still eating supper, and their parents are not ready to go yet. From other rooms come the sounds of a baby screaming, water running, a television musical (no words: probably a dance number—patterns of gliding figures come to mind). Mrs Tucker sweeps into the kitchen, fussing with her hair, and snatches a baby bottle full of milk out of a pan of warm water, rushes out again. ‘Harry!’ she calls. ‘The babysitter’s here already!’

Kelly Link, “The Specialist’s Hat” (Event Horizon, 1998)

“When you’re Dead,” Samantha says, “you don’t have to brush your teeth.”

“When you’re Dead,” Claire says, “you live in a box, and it’s always dark, but you’re not ever afraid.”

Claire and Samantha are identical twins. Their combined age is twenty years, four months, and six days. Claire is better at being Dead than Samantha.

Octavia Butler, “Bloodchild” (1995)

My last night of childhood began with a visit home. T’Gatoi’s sister had given us two sterile eggs. T’Gatoi gave one to my mother, brother, and sisters. She insisted that I eat the other one alone. It didn’t matter. There was still enough to leave everyone feeling good. Almost everyone. My mother wouldn’t take any. She sat, watching everyone drifting and dreaming without her. Most of the time she watched me.

Brian Evenson, “Windeye” (2009)

They lived, when he was growing up, in a simple house, an old bungalow with a converted attic and sides covered in cedar shake. In the back, where an oak thrust its branches over the roof, the shake was light brown, almost honey. In the front, where the sun struck it full, it had weathered to a pale gray, like a dirty bone. There, the shingles were brittle, thinned by sun and rain, and if you were careful you could slip your fingers up behind some of them. Or at least his sister could. He was older and his fingers were thicker, so he could not.

Carmen Maria Machado, “The Husband Stitch” (Granta, 2014)

In the beginning, I know I want him before he does. This isn’t how things are done, but this is how I am going to do them. I am at a neighbour’s party with my parents, and I am seventeen. Though my father didn’t notice, I drank half a glass of white wine in the kitchen a few minutes ago, with the neighbour’s teenage daughter. Everything is soft, like a fresh oil painting.

Laird Barron, “Shiva, Open Your Eye” (Nightmare Magazine, 2013)

The human condition can be summed up in a drop of blood. Show me a teaspoon of blood and I will reveal to thee the ineffable nature of the cosmos, naked and squirming. Squirming. Funny how the truth always seems to do that when you shine a light on it.

Shirley Jackson, “The Daemon Lover” (1949)

She had not slept well; from one-thirty, when Jamie left and she went lingeringly to bed, until seven, when she at last allowed herself to get up and make coffee, she had slept fitfully, stirring awake to open her eyes and look into the half-darkness, remembering over and over, slipping again into a feverish dream. She spent almost an hour over her coffee—they were to have a real breakfast on the way—and then, unless she wanted to dress early, had nothing to do. She washed her coffee cup and made the bed, looking carefully over the clothes she planned to wear, worried unnecessarily, at the window, over whether it would be a fine day. She sat down to read, thought that she might write a letter to her sister instead, and began, in her finest handwriting, “Dearest Anne, by the time you get this I will be married. Doesn’t it sound funny? I can hardly believe it myself, but when I tell you how it happened, you’ll see it’s even stranger than that…”

Harlan Ellison, “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream” (IF: Worlds of Science Fiction, 1967)

Limp, the body of Gorrister hung from the pink palette; unsupported—hanging high above us in the computer chamber; and it did not shiver in the chill, oily breeze that blew eternally through the main cavern. The body hung head down, attached to the underside of the palette by the sole of its right foot. It had been drained of blood through a precise incision made from ear to ear under the lantern jaw. There was no blood on the reflective surface of the metal floor.

Richard Matheson, “Button, Button” (Playboy, 1970)

The package was lying by the front door—a cube-shaped carton sealed with tape, their name and address printed by hand: “Mr. and Mrs. Aurthur Lewis, 21 7 E. Thirty-seventh Street, New York, New York 10016.” Norma picked it up, unlocked the door, and went into the apartment. It was just getting dark.

John Langan,”Renfrew’s Course” (Lightspeed, 2012)

“So this is the wizard,” Neil said.

“Supposedly,” Jim said.

Six feet tall, the statue had been carved from wood that retained most of its whiteness, even though the date cut into its base read 2005, seven years ago. Jim thought the color might be due to its not having been finished—splinters stood out from the wood’s uneven surface—but didn’t know enough about carpentry to be certain.

“Looks kind of Gandalf,” Neil said.

Silvia Moreno-Garcia, “Lacrimosa” (Nightmare Magazine, 2015)

The woman is a mound of dirt and rags pushing a squeaky shopping cart; a lump that moves steadily, slowly forward, as if dragged by an invisible tide. Her long, greasy hair hides her face but Ramon feels her staring at him.

He looks ahead. The best thing to do with the homeless mob littering Vancouver is to ignore it. Give them a buck and the beggars cling to you like barnacles.

“Have you seen my children?” the woman asks.

Angela Carter, “The Bloody Chamber” (1979)

I remember how, that night, I lay awake in the wagon-lit in a tender, delicious ecstasy of excitement, my burning cheek pressed against the impeccable linen of the pillow and the pounding of my heart mimicking that of the great pistons ceaselessly thrusting the train that bore me through the night, away from Paris, away from girlhood, away from the white, enclosed quietude of my mother’s apartment, into the unguessable country of marriage.

Karen Russell, “The Prospectors” (The New Yorker, 2015)

The entire ride would take eleven minutes. That was what the boy had promised us, the boy who never showed.

It would appear that Martin Scorsese, Leo DiCaprio, and David Grann’s recent creative ménage à trois was so damn satisfying for all involved that the trio have decided to go for another roll in the hay.

Yes, just as Killers of the Flower Moon opens to rapturous reviews worldwide, everyone’s favorite diminutive octogenarian auteur has confirmed that his next big project will be a DiCaprio-starring film adaptation of New Yorker staff writer/literary adaptation Midas David Grann’s 2023 nonfiction bestseller, The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder. 

In an interview with the Times of London earlier this week, Scorsese confirmed he will be filming The Wager as his next project, which means that his planned biopics of Teddy Roosevelt and Jerry Garcia, as well as his hinted-at adaptation of Marilynne Robinson’s Home, will have to wait for now.

This will be the seventh feature film collaboration between Scorsese and DiCaprio (Marty and Robert DeNiro have worked on 10 movies together), and the sixth big screen adaptation of one of David Grann’s New Yorker articles or books.

Attention all writers who write about writing (or painting, or dancing, or music…): the Interlochen Center for the Arts and The Pattis Family Foundation have established a new annual award that seeks to recognize “outstanding works of fiction or nonfiction” that “inspire, illuminate, or exemplify the creative process in fields such as creative writing, dance, film and new media, music, theatre, and visual arts.”

The inaugural Pattis Family Foundation Creative Arts Book Award is open to all books of fiction or nonfiction originally written in English and published in 2022 or 2023. The author of the winning book will receive a $25,000 cash prize, and will be invited for a multi-day residency at Interlochen Arts Academy and to join the lineup of the National Writers Series in Traverse City, Michigan. Two runner-up awards of $2,500 may also be presented.

“We are delighted to partner with Interlochen for the latest in our series of book awards. Each of our awards supports an organization we hold in high esteem and puts a spotlight on important books exploring subject areas we deeply care about,” said Lisa Pattis in a press release.

“We have known Interlochen for more than 20 years and we truly admire its impact across the creative arts,” added Mark Pattis in the same release. “Interlochen’s long history and its transformative effect on its students make it an ideal partner to identify and recognize the most significant books exploring the creative process.”

Anyone can nominate a book for free by completing this entry form before June 1, 2024. A shortlist will be announced in September, and the winner and runners-up will be announced in November 2024.

The situation in Gaza continues to deteriorate. At the time of this writing, some 4,200 people have been killed in Gaza in the last ten days—including over 1,000 children—hundreds of them in a horrifying explosion at the Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City on Tuesday. According to Israeli authorities, there are also at least 199 people, captured by Hamas during the brutal October 7 attacks, who are currently being held hostage in Gaza, including children and the elderly.

Today, President Biden is in Israel; in a speech, he “announced $100 million in aid to help civilians in Gaza and the West Bank and said he had secured a commitment from Israel’s government to allow food, water and medicine to be delivered to Palestinians in Gaza from Egypt in a humanitarian effort overseen by the United Nations and others.”

However, despite the U.N. Secretary-General’s calls for an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire” as well as global protests and outcry—including a large group of Jewish demonstrators outside the White House—the United States has refused to call for a ceasefire; in fact, today, the U.S. vetoed a U.N. resolution “that would have condemned violence against all civilians in the Israel-Hamas war including ‘the heinous terrorists attacks by Hamas’ against Israel, and would have urged humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza.”

Here are a few recent pieces from around the internet that the Literary Hub staff has been reading about the worsening crisis and its many reverberations:

“Explanations Are Not Excuses,” Sarah Schulman, New York Magazine

Selective recognition is the way we maintain our own sense of goodness. Today, we see this process of denial in every aspect of our lives. In this moment, it has become a tool to justify the sustained murder of thousands in Gaza, where the current death toll sits at over 2,600 people. As Israel began its relentless retaliation last week, an accompanying image of Israeli and American moral cleanliness was put swiftly into action. This is called “manufactured consent” — Noam Chomsky’s term for a system-supported propaganda by which authorities and media agree on a simplified reality, and it becomes the assumptive truth. We’ve seen this erasure of history in the uniform responses by western world leaders, university administrations, heads of foundations, and even book fairs over the past week.

“Letter From the Editor: ‘We Cannot Cross Until We Carry Each Other’,” Arielle Angel, Jewish Currents

Already complex and fragile relationships between Palestinian and left-wing Jewish activists—as well as factions within both of these groups—are being challenged as we struggle to derive the same meaning from the images coming across our screens. Friends and colleagues on all sides find themselves hurt by one another’s public reactions, or by their silence. . . . It is a situation none of us have ever before confronted in earnest, amid a long history of vastly disproportionate death tolls. And now, when we need it most, we find ourselves struggling with a lack of emotional and political vocabulary.

“Against the Imposters,” M. Muhannad Ayyash, The Baffler

The story of the Palestinian struggle is of course a complex one; the rise of Hamas within Palestinian political life alone has been the subject of many books and articles. And many Palestinians are opposed to Hamas on a number of issues and from a variety of perspectives, myself included. But what all these Western imposters have never understood is that we understand our struggle as a people’s struggle, not the struggle of this or that political faction. Across all our big and sharp differences, we know that we are all together in the end because it is all of the Palestinian people who are under brutal occupation and assault, aspiring for the same freedom and liberation. Palestinians, of course, share their experience of colonial violence with many communities and peoples from across the world, both historically and into the present. But we also understand that we are indeed alone in experiencing the specific structures of Israeli settler-colonial violence, and that we therefore must always stand together and help each other as people. Our collectivity as a people is our support and our guide.

“These New Ghosts,” Rob Delaney, Tribune

Can you kill anyone to fix this? Who? Where are they? Do you bring your other children with you to do it? Or do you get a babysitter for your other kids so you can go try and kill them? Is your babysitter alive? If you can’t kill your child’s murderer specifically, is there someone else you could kill? Would it feel good then and there, like working out or taking a shit? If so, how long would it take the feeling to dissipate?

“An Open Letter in Support of Adania Shibli From More Than 350 Writers, Editors, and Publishers,” Literary Hub

The shocking and tragic events that began on October 7th and are ongoing today have had repercussions all over the globe, including within the publishing world. Award-winning Palestinian author Adania Shibli, who was a finalist for the 2020 National Book Award for her book Minor Detail (New Directions/Fitzcarraldo, translated by Elisabeth Jaquette), was to receive Germany’s 2023 LiBeraturpreis for the same book, published in German as Eine Nebensache (Berenberg Verlag, translated by Günther Orth) at the 2023 Frankfurt Book Fair, which begins this week.

On October 13, the organizers of the prize, Litprom, which is funded in part by the German government and the Frankfurt Book Fair, released a statement saying that the prize-giving ceremony would no longer take place at the book fair.

“Doomsday Diaries,” Sarah Aziza, The Baffler

I wake strangely early on October 7, groggy from a late night out. In my kitchen, I set my teapot to boil and the radio to BBC. A moment later I hear a news bulletin beginning with “Palestinian fighters from Gaza have crossed into Israel . . .” I turn in the direction of the disembodied sound. I am used to waking to news of violence in the West Bank—at least one morning each week seems to begin this way, with a story of settler attacks or another Israel Defense Force raid. In fact, Labib Dumaidi, a nineteen-year-old Palestinian university student, was shot yesterday during another pogrom in Huwara in the West Bank. But this report is something different, and my mind struggles to grasp the words. Gaza? How?

“Gaza: The Cost of Escalation,” Ben Rhodes, New York Review of Books

We don’t yet know how events will unfold. But the history of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, the Middle East, and the US’s own recent experience suggests that violence is likely to beget more violence, that trauma will beget more trauma. It is easier to start or escalate wars than to end them, and the consequences of war are always unpredictable. Short-term victories can engender longer-term challenges. Victors on the battlefield can lose something of themselves at home.

“A letter to the friendships I have lost and will lose,” Ijeoma Oluo, Behind the Book

This letter is to my friends. To the people in my social circles. The people in my writing and activism communities. The people I know or have felt kinship with online or in person. This is to the people who have sent me messages voicing their disappointment and dismay at what I have been saying. And to those who have said nothing, and are instead deciding right now to fade away from my life for good.

I know that my immediate focus on the safety of people in Gaza in the aftermath of the Hamas attacks seems to be in poor taste to many.

I know that my refusal to include denouncements of Hamas in my posts and videos talking about what is happening in Gaza seems cold and uncaring at best, antisemitic at worst.

I know that the passion I have towards freeing the Palestinian people seems grotesque in response to your pain.

I know this because you have told me, because many of you are sharing such sentiments in your messages and your status updates.

But this is what I must do.

“An Open Letter on the Situation in Palestine,” The London Review of Books

The deliberate killing of civilians is always an atrocity. It is a violation of international law and an outrage against the sanctity of human life. In Gaza, neither the occupying power, Israel, nor the armed groups of the people under occupation, the Palestinians, can ever be justified in targeting defenceless people. We can only express our grief and heartbreak for the victims of these most recent tragedies, and for their families, both Palestinians and Israelis. . . .

We call on our governments to demand an immediate ceasefire and the unimpeded admission of humanitarian aid into Gaza. We also demand an end to all arms shipments and military funding, supplies that can only exacerbate the humanitarian catastrophe at hand. Although these measures will not be enough to secure true justice, liberation and equality for all in the region, they represent an urgent and indispensable first step. We plead for an end to all violence, an end to all oppression and denial of human rights, and a path towards a just and sustainable peace for all.

“‘The Interviewer Wants to Know About Fashion’: A Poem by Hala Alyan,” Literary Hub

Think of all the calla lilies.
Think of all the words that rhyme with calla.
Isn’t it a miracle that they come back?
The flowers. The dead. I watch a woman
bury her child. How? I lost a fetus
and couldn’t eat breakfast for a week.
I watch a woman and the watching is a crime,
so I return my eyes. The sea foams like a dog.
What’s five thousand miles between friends?

“How Social Media Abdicated Responsibility for the News,” Kyle Chayka, The New Yorker

An “algorithmically driven fog of war” is how one journalist described the deluge of disinformation and mislabelled footage on X. Videos from a paragliding accident in South Korea in June of this year, the Syrian civil war in 2014, and a combat video game called Arma 3 have all been falsely labelled as scenes from Israel or Gaza. (Inquiries I sent to X were met with an e-mail reading, “Busy now, please check back later.”) On October 8th, Musk posted a tweet recommending two accounts to follow for information on the conflict, @WarMonitors and @sentdefender, neither of which is a formal media company, but both are paid X subscribers. Later that day, after users pointed out that both accounts regularly post falsities, Musk deleted the recommendation. Where Twitter was once one of the better-moderated digital platforms, X is most trustworthy as a source for finding out what its owner wants you to see.

“Here’s how you can help people in Gaza right now,” Dan Sheehan, Literary Hub

The devastating humanitarian crisis in Gaza is deepening, with Israel cutting off access to food, water, fuel and electricity for the besieged enclave’s 2.3 million residents and unleashing wave after wave of air strikes that Palestinian authorities say have killed more than 2,800 people (including at least 724 children) and injured more than 10,000.

The situation is dire, but here’s what you can do right now to support the people of Gaza.

It’s time: the adaptation of Ottessa Moshfegh’s first novel, Eileen—which she once described as her attempt at “a mainstream book a normal person could read”—is coming to theaters on December 1. Directed by William Oldroyd (who also directed the excellent Lady Macbeth), and written by Moshfegh along with her partner Luke Goebel, the film stars Thomasin McKenzie as Eileen and Anne Hathaway as Rebecca; it also stars Shea Whigham, Marin Ireland and Owen Teague. Watch the trailer below—and if you’re so inclined, refresh your memory of the book by reading an excerpt here.

It’s the middle of October already, and, if time shows no sign of slowing, the same is true for the pace of new books coming out this month. No matter what you’ve been doing—planning a costume, consuming Halloween candy before the trick-or-treaters can get it, engaging in the many grand rituals associated with the month, pondering how best to view the legendary Great Pumpkin, or something else—you can be sure that, if nothing else, there will be a bevy of new books to keep you company. Below, you’ll find novels and story collections from long-time luminaries, prize-winners, and new authors alike; highly anticipated poetry; and nonfiction tackling obscenity laws, the charms of cats, deafness, dictionaries, women’s snowboarding, and much, much more. If you’re in the mood for exciting new literature along with your hotly contested bowl of candy corns, you’re in luck, and I hope you find something below to check out (with or without those contested candies)!

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Tan Twan Eng, The House of Doors
(Bloomsbury)

“Exquisite….Tan takes on a behemoth task here: combining sensational fact and intimate fiction in a British colonial Asian setting complicated by white privilege, politics, social hypocrisy, gender inequity, racism, homophobia, and more….[He] succeeds in delivering another intricate literary gift.”
–Booklist

Teju Cole, Tremor
(Random House)

“A master class in the morality of art…a novel of ideas but also of voices, of different perspectives claiming the first-person narrative I. The precision of detail stresses the importance of seeing, but identity, perspective, and context determine who is seeing what….A provocative and profound meditation on art and life in a world of terror.”
–Kirkus Reviews

Kelsey Norris, House Gone Quiet: Stories
(Scribner)

“The windows in the House Gone Quiet offer a glimpse into communities drawn together in strange times…Norris presents a wide cast of characters in their own worlds, each overflowing with a sense of eeriness and surrealism…With its moments of dark humor, this genre-defying debut is perfect for readers of Margaret Atwood and Carmen Maria Machado.”
–Booklist

Ahmed Naji, Rotten Evidence: Reading and Writing in an Egyptian Prison (trans. Katharine Halls)
(McSweeney’s)

“In this searing memoir, Egyptian journalist and novelist Naji…shares his experiences in prison after his writings were deemed offensive to public morality. In 2014, an Egyptian literary magazine published a section of Naji’s second novel, Using Life, which led to a complaint…and charges that Naji’s writings were a ‘malicious violation of the sanctity of morals’….In lucid prose undergirded by righteous anger, he delivers a moving testament to the power of free expression.”
–Publishers Weekly

Reggie Watts, Great Falls, MT: Fast Times, Post-Punk Weirdos, and a Tale of Coming Home Again
(Tiny Reparations)

“Reminiscent of experimental meta-memoirs like A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Great Falls, MT is earnest, optimistic, and future-forward but also nostalgic for (and critical of) times gone by, particularly the ’90s grunge boom and that greater Pacific Northwest-based cultural moment.”
–Vulture

Patricia Evangelista, Some People Need Killing: A Memoir of Murder in My Country
(Random House)

“In this blindingly ambitious, unfathomably brave, fiercely reported book, Patricia Evangelista exposes the evil in her country…with an insightfulness that I have not encountered since the work of Hannah Arendt. This is an account of a dark chapter in the Philippines, an examination of how murder was conflated with salvation in a violent society….You may think you are inured to shock, but this book is an exploding bomb that will damage you anew, making you wiser as it does so.”
–Andrew Solomon

Alisha Dietzman, Sweet Movie: Poems
(Beacon Press)

“Alisha Dietzman is a love poet for the twenty-first century, a fierce, devoted sensualist who feeds on aesthetic experience….Sweet Movie [is] a book on the run—from men, from religion, from family, from legacies of violence against women—and it wants you along for the ride. And it’s thrilling.”
–Katie Peterson

Shane McCrae, The Many Hundreds of the Scent: Poems
(FSG)

“As the whole world asked, ‘Can anyone explain this strange feeling,’  a poet raised his hand….McCrae shows us how we need new music and new ears and eyes.”
–Debbra Palmer

Molly McGhee, Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind
(Astra House)

“[Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind] is a brutal examination of the psychological pressures and ethical complexity required to survive under late capitalism, [but] McGhee’s wry humor, tenderness, and razor-sharp writing keep it from veering into nihilism and infuse it with a real, if melancholy, kind of hope. Upton Sinclair meets modern workplace satire—with a lot of heart.”
–Kirkus Reviews

Adam Thirlwell, The Future Future
(FSG)

“A deeply contemporary story about a woman using the limited forms of power at her disposal to hollow out a space of agency in a violently patriarchal world….Thirlwell’s prose is hypnotic and coolly beautiful. The writing is full of dreamlike leaps, not just at the level of plot, but in its sentences, too . . . The Future Future is a strange and evasive novel…[with] a beauty and a mysterious power that reflect its enigmatic protagonist.”
–The Guardian

Gregg Hecimovich, The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts: The True Story of the Bondwoman’s Narrative
(Ecco Press)

“Decades of sleuthing in the archives yielded the astonishing finds that lie behind The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts, Gregg Hecimovich’s spellbinding new biography. At once a mystery, a thriller, and an elegy, this book is a riveting reconstruction of the life—and literary influences—of the author of The Bondwoman’s Narrative (1858), the first novel written by a Black woman in the United States.”
–Jill Lepore

Jonathan Lee Clark, Touch the Future: A Manifesto in Essays
(Norton)

“John Lee Clark writes against the grain with intellectual ferocity and dry wit; with linguistic playfulness and unsparing precision; and above all, with an expansive, curious, tireless compassion. Society may ignore and isolate DeafBlind people, but as Clark shows us again and again, it is the sighted and hearing world that is marginalized by its failure to understand DeafBlind life, and never the other way around.”
–Andrew LeLand

Sarah Ogilvie, The Dictionary People: The Unsung Heroes Who Created the Oxford English Dictionary
(Knopf)

“As is true of so many of the most important things in an everyday life (the earth, for instance) we take for granted, we never pause a moment to wonder: How did this get made? The Oxford English Dictionary is, especially in my life, such a wonder. In The Dictionary People—a lively, funny book, full of eccentrics—Sarah Ogilvie finds all the magical characters who contributed to making the Dictionary. This is an exquisitely written book.”
–Jamaica Kincaid

Marie NDiaye, Vengeance Is Mine (trans. Jordan Stump)
(Knopf)

“In this disquieting, quietly beautiful novel, Marie NDiaye writes about an unimaginable crime placing around it a world of confusion, trauma, and memories of a past that cannot be trusted. There’s more questions than answers in this fiercely intelligent story: everyone is complex and full of shadows, as life is.”
–Mariana Enríquez

Ye Chun, Straw Dogs of the Universe
(Catapult)

“Ye Chun writes with depth and precision about the power of the human spirit–its resilience, tenderness, darkness, and yearning—even under the harshest of circumstances. Straw Dogs of the Universe is a luminous, unforgettable story about the terror and beauty of life for Chinese immigrants in the early American West. It will leave you aching by its end.”
–Alexandra Chang

Allison Epstein, Let the Dead Bury the Dead
(Doubleday)

“Allison Epstein pulls readers effortlessly into a world of tsars, revolutionaries, and ancient magic in this triumphant work of historical imagination. Woven from the threads of both the country’s history and its haunting folklore, Let the Dead Bury the Dead is atmospheric and propulsively suspenseful, a brilliantly crafted alternate vision of a Russia on the edge of revolution. Readers will find themselves breathless.”
–Molly Greeley

Adia Harvey Wingfield, Gray Areas: How the Way We Work Perpetuates Racism and What We Can Do to Fix It
(Amistad Press)

“Sociologist Wingfield (Flatlining) delivers an authoritative study of racial inequality in the workplace. Drawing from more than a decade’s worth of interviews with seven Black workers in various fields—including academia, medicine, and film—Wingfield demonstrates how the customs and practices entrenched in corporate culture perpetuate institutional racism….[A] vital and accessible study.”
–Publishers Weekly

Sarah Brown, The Hidden Language of Cats: How They Have Us at Meow
(Dutton Penguin Random House)

“Purrs, hisses, meows, scents, scratches, ear tilts, tail flicks, and head butts. Cats are wonderfully expressive across a variety of modalities, even if their meaning isn’t always clear to us. Sarah Brown’s delightful book will help you better understand what our feline friends are trying to say, while appreciating how much remains mysterious.”
–Sean Carroll

Lindsey Jacobellis, Unforgiving: Lessons from the Fall
(Harper)

“Highly recommended for fans of winter and Olympic sports. Also essential for women’s sports history collections. Winter and extreme sports fans will find this Olympic champion’s resiliency, ability to overcome disappointment, and relationship with her family inspiring.”
–Booklist

Jennifer DuBois, The Last Language
(Milkweed)

“A thematic companion to Zoë Heller’s Notes on a Scandal and Francine Prose’s Blue Angel, author duBois (The Spectators, 2019) tackles questions of communication, consent, and humanity head-on….Tautly paced, tackling both grandiose theories of linguistics and the everyday realities of caretaking, The Last Language is hard to put down.”
–Booklist

Amy Kurzweil, Artificial: A Love Story
(Catapult)

“[Kurzweil] reconstructs archival materials in graphic form, including her grandfather’s correspondence, newspaper clippings, photographs, and memories. This gives the work a collage effect, which works beautifully….Kurzweil’s highly recommended memoir is unlike any other. It will leave readers with much to contemplate.”
–Library Journal

Christine Coulson, One Woman Show
(Avid Reader Press)

“Coulson’s language is perfection. One Woman Show is heartbreaking and funny and comes together like a ballad. I love the pages of voices, like voices in the galleries, and so many moments made me laugh. Truly masterful and patient and insane, in the best way.”
–Leanne Shapton

Liza Mundy, The Sisterhood: The Secret History of Women at the CIA
(Crown Publishing Group)

“With painstaking research, an award-winning journalist reveals the crucial roles undertaken by women in the intelligence arena….The result is a vivid, compelling, and important book. Another winner from Mundy, who tells a story that deserves to be told about women who deserve to be remembered.”
–Kirkus Reviews

Elena Kostyuchenko, I Love Russia: Reporting from a Lost Country (trans. Bela Shayevich, Ilona Yazhbin Chavasse)
(Penguin)

“Would you like to know where Putin comes from? What the Russians are like today? And why? Read this book. For years, the author has been keeping a diary of the soul of her people, with love and with hate….The author goes to homes and schools, sits at weddings and celebrations, asking about love and hate, children and parents. We get to see the rise of the monster that now leaves its footprints in Kyiv, Bucha, and Irpin—and how it forces the whole world to fear the future.”
–Svetlana Alexievich

Now in its eighth day, the devastating humanitarian crisis in Gaza is deepening, with Israel cutting off access to food, water, fuel and electricity for the besieged enclave’s 2.3 million residents and unleashing wave after wave of air strikes that Palestinian authorities say have killed more than 2,800 people (including at least 724 children) and injured more than 10,000.

The World Health Organization today warned that there are only “24 hours of water, electricity and fuel left” in the besieged Gaza Strip as Israeli bombardment continues.

The situation is dire, but here’s what you can do right now to support the people of Gaza.

DONATE

Medical Aid for Palestinians is on the ground in Gaza where they are working to stock hospitals with essential drugs, disposables, and other healthcare supplies.

Palestine Children’s Relief Fund is the primary humanitarian organization in Palestine. They deliver crucial, life-saving medical and humanitarian aid on the ground.

The World Food Program has been distributing fresh bread, canned food and ready-to-eat food to those who sought refuge in United Nations Relief and Works Agency shelters in Gaza.

Doctors Without Borders is providing support to hospitals and health facilities in Gaza.

UNRWA is providing medical support, trauma relief, and food assistance on the ground in Gaza.

CALL

Bleak as the domestic political landscape is on this issue, there are now a record number of members of Congress officially calling for a ceasefire. It’s important to remember that putting pressure on politicians in America could end up saving lives in Gaza.

Phone or email your representatives in Congress. Demand a de-escalation and call for a ceasefire, and demand that humanitarian assistance be allowed into the Gaza Strip.

PROTEST

Tens of thousands of people around the world have already taken to the streets, often under the threat of violence and arrest, to show their solidarity with the Palestinian people and to call for an end to Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza.

In the week ahead, there will be numerous demonstrations throughout the U.S. calling for a ceasefire. If you can, join one.

AMPLIFY

In recent days, various activists, writers, and journalists—including Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Azmat Khan, author and columnist Fatima Bhutto, and artist and activist Molly Crabapple—have been “Shadowbanned” from Instagram and other social media platforms for posting about the atrocities occurring in Gaza.

Use your platform to amplify the voices of those shining a light on the human rights abuses being committed by the IDF against the people of Gaza, and to push back against the conflation of Palestinian solidarity with pro-Hamas sentiment and antisemitism.