Dan Simmons, 77, award-winning author of 31 novels and short story collections, passed away on February 21, 2026 in Longmont, Colorado. Many of his books won honors ranging from the Hugo Award, science fiction’s most prestigious award, to two World Fantasy Awards, three Bram Stoker Awards for horror, a dozen Locus Awards, and the Shirley Jackson Award. His titles have been translated into at least 20 languages and published in 28 foreign countries. Read more
Month: February 2026
Lauren Groff’s Newest Stories Prove She’s Among the Best in the Game
The stories in Lauren Groff’s third collection, “Brawler,” largely feature people who’ve hit crisis points in their lives: the abusive partner, the natural disaster, the relapse, the deathbed. This is as it ought to be with short stories, which have to make their points in a relative hurry. Groff, a perpetual bestseller, is gifted at that: Her previous collection, “Florida,” was a National Book Award finalist, along with two of her other books that earned the honor. Read more
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Edward Hoagland, Lyrical Chronicler of the Natural World, Dies at 93
Widely considered one of the country’s foremost essayists and often described as an heir to Thoreau, Mr. Hoagland was famed for transforming the modern nature essay into a vehicle for autobiographical introspection. Read more
Michael Silverblatt, ‘Genius’ Host of KCRW Literary Show ‘Bookworm,’ Dies at 73
Michael Silverblatt, the longtime host of the KCRW radio show “Bookworm” — known for interviews of authors so in depth that they sometimes left his subjects astounded at his breadth of knowledge of their work — has died. Read more
Ohio Prepares for Yearlong Celebration of Toni Morrison
The yearlong initiative, coordinated by Literary Cleveland in partnership with Ohio Humanities, the Ohioana Library Association and the Toni Morrison Society, officially launches Feb. 18, which would have been Morrison’s 95th birthday. Read more
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‘The Boundless Deep: Young Tennyson, Science and the Crisis of Belief’
Holmes, master biographer that he is, vividly conjures up this awkward, compelling figure. What gives his book its exceptional energy, though, is not what is happening on the surface of Tennyson’s life and Holmes’s narrative. It is the powerful undertow of threatened belief and existential anxiety tugging the reader down … This biography is a compelling story of an odd, brilliant, charismatic character, and a reappraisal of a man who had become so very established we could no longer see him. Read more
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Crime and the City: Reno
The international crime reading series pops in on the biggest little city in the world. Read more
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‘City Lights: Lawrence Ferlinghetti and the Biography of a Bookstore’
Ferlinghetti was an orphaned child of immigrants, a self-proclaimed anarchopacifist, and a GI-Bill funded doctoral student at the Sorbonne. From his arrival in San Francisco in 1951 to his death on February 22, 2021, he was a poet, painter, critic, editor, activist, translator, and business owner. He was one of the most important public intellectuals of his day, an uncompromising champion for literature’s power, freedom of expression, and the necessity of both to democracy. Even as our civic institutions suffer, independent bookstores like City Lights have become stronger. And we need them now, more than ever. Universities are under threat of government interference, book banning has reached unprecedented levels, journalists and artists and media outlets and attorneys are being punished, silenced, and doxed, and dissent everywhere is being criminalized. Read more
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Sales of ‘Wuthering Heights’ Skyrocket Ahead of Film Adaptation
The number of novels sold rose nearly fivefold year on year in the UK in January, Penguin Classics reports, as Emerald Fennell’s hotly anticipated take is set for release next week. Read more Watch trailer
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‘The Final Score’ by Don Winslow
A collection of six short stories about crimes both planned and accidental, the collision of dreams and reality, and the things people do for love. Read more
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