Author name: Robin Sharp

The Best of the Literary Internet, Every Day TODAY: In 1972, Betty Smith dies.  “Remember that every bit of worldbuilding that makes it to the page adds to the set, and stage space is limited.” Erika Swyler on the art of worldbuilding. | Lit Hub Craft James H. Sweet chronicles the mystery of the Black

A weekly behind-the-scenes dive into everything interesting, dynamic, strange, and wonderful happening in literary culture—featuring Lit Hub staff, columnists, and special guests! Hosted by Drew Broussard. The year has really gotten off on a rough foot. But what lessons can we take from deeply admired artists like Ursula K. Le Guin and David Lynch, for

I started writing about my wild girl, Atalanta—and about Bernadette, the scholar tasked with discovering and revealing Atalanta’s story in order to preserve the girl’s freedom—during the long months of the COVID-19 lockdown, when I was isolated with my own young son and daughter. Sometimes fiction comes so directly from life that all the usual

Monday, January 20 is sure to be a day of pomp and circumstance that brings Americans of all political leanings together in celebration of the nation’s most cherished of institutions. We are talking, of course, about the college football national championship game in Atlanta between Ohio State and Notre Dame. Article continues after advertisement There

“Only the sunlight holds things together. Noon is the crucial hour: the desert reveals itself nakedly and cruelly, with no meaning but its own existence.”–Edward Abbey* Article continues after advertisement Ofelia Zepeda occupied an old, high-ceilinged office on the ground level of a century-old brick building at the University of Arizona. She wore a necklace

Edging the window up an inch (a basement kitchen needs airing), the smell of roasting potatoes wafts in. Nearby, in other Edinburgh kitchens, cooks are preparing for Burns Night suppers. The immortal Scottish poet Robert Burns was born on 25 January 1759 and, in his honor, everywhere from the Northern Highlands to the Cheviot Hills,

This first appeared in Lit Hub’s Craft of Writing newsletter—sign up here. Article continues after advertisement As an ex-actor and former set carpenter, I’m befuddled by the book world’s preoccupation with worldbuilding, and how often it’s used to denote genre. Worldbuilding is essential to fiction, no matter what genre, as set design is to theater. Portal fantasies

In April 1769, a small British vessel sailing westward along the southern coast of Hispaniola made a disturbing discovery. In the shallow waters be-tween Petit Trou and Cape Mongou, near the French/ Spanish colonial border that today separates Haiti from the Dominican Republic, the crew spotted what appeared to be the hull of a ship