Since the Selected Letters of John Updike was published in October 2025, there have been dozens of interviews with the volume’s editor, James Schiff, and with Michael Updike, the family’s representative on the John Updike Literary Trust, who also has … Continue reading →

The Literary Encyclopedia, an online academic resource based in the U.K., published two new articles on John Updike in February 2026: “John Updike, Collected Poems: 1953-1993,” by Leon Lewis (Appalachian State University), and “John Updike: The Poorhouse Fair,” by Laurence … Continue reading →

James Plath is best known to fellow Updike enthusiasts as president of The John Updike Society and an Updike scholar who edited two books of Updike interviews. But he’s also a creative writer, and after spending two weeks at Quarry … Continue reading →

Trevor Meek, of The Local News (Ipswich, Mass.), published a Jan. 31, 2026 piece on the Selected Letters of John Updike that began, “Living in Ipswich in the 1960s and ’70s with John Updike as a neighbor meant playing a … Continue reading →

In Sheena Meng’s “A requiem for Raritan,” published on The Point, one thing rings pointedly clear: “The editors were not particularly fond of Updike. Richard Poirier and Thomas R. Edwards, both literary critics and professors of literature at Rutgers, leveled … Continue reading →

The New Yorker is taking the entire year to celebrate its centennial, and deservedly so. John Updike, whose first major publications were in those New Yorker pages, turns up quite a bit in the article by Jill Lepore on “The Editorial Battles that … Continue reading →

For this entry we need to thank writer Sherman Alexie for calling it to our attention. Alexie gleefully (and deservedly so) posted, “There are only three writers who have work in both A Century of Poetry in The New Yorker [edited … Continue reading →

Dossier of the Muses, an International Journal of Literary Studies, announced that Vol. 2:1 (July 2023) will be devoted to John Updike. The journal is based at Govt. College for Women M.A. Road, Srinigar Cluster University, Srinigar, J&K India, and … Continue reading →

Raghupati Bhatt’s critical essay, “John Updike’s Indian Connection,” was published in the International Journal of Scientific and Research Publications Vol. 4: 7 (July 2014). It is now completely downloadable online. “The reader finds that Updike’s women characters have reached a … Continue reading →

Arizona Quarterly: A Journal of American Literature, Culture, and Theory, based at the University of Arizona and published online by Johns Hopkins University Press, included an important essay on Updike in the Volume 77: 4 (Winter 2021) issue: “John Updike: … Continue reading →

A second collaborative collection of essays by Laurence W. Mazzeno and Sue Norton was recently published by Palgrave Macmillan in Switzerland. Contemporary American Fiction in the European Classroom: Teaching and Texts contains an essay on “John Updike in Serbia” by … Continue reading →

Photo: Joyce Dopkeen/The New York Times Here’s a fascinating bit of trivia: John Updike—reviewed and interviewed at least as much and probably more than any other writer—first appeared in The New York Times not in connection with his writing, but … Continue reading →

Blogger Mia Savant posted a Ponder Savant entry on “Jackson Pollock and Other Poems by Abigail George” that includes the Pollock poem and also poems dedicated to John Updike and Georgia O’Keeffe. Here’s the Updike poem: John Updike He … Continue reading →

The Moderate Imagination: The Political Thought of John Updike and the Decline of New Deal Liberalism, a monograph by John Updike Society member Yoav Fromer, is now available for pre-orders at Amazon.com. Scheduled for June 12, 2020 publication by the … Continue reading →

In under three weeks Updike fans can finally read the much-anticipated Updike & Politics: New Considerations, edited by Matthew Shipe and Scott Dill. The collection of essays, to be published on July 15 by Lexington Books, features essays from Marshall … Continue reading →

Radojka Vukčević, the editor of the peer-reviewed Belgrade English Language & Literature Studies, attended the 5th John Updike Society Conference in Serbia and was impressed with the quality of papers presented, just as members were impressed by Belgrade BELLS. Three … Continue reading →

Member Carla Ferreira, who is an associate professor in the Literature and Language Department at Federal University of Sao Carlos, Brazil, reports that her dissertation has been published in book form. The title is North and South Readings: Perception of … Continue reading →

In 1977, the year when Couples was translated and published in Serbian, the prominent Serbian (then Yugoslavian) woman poet Ljiljana Djurdjić wrote a poem titled “A Dream for John Updike”—obviously inspired by the novel The Centaur, which was translated in … Continue reading →

How can April be the cruelest month when it’s National Poetry Month? And The Atlantic teases readers with a reminder that John Updike wasn’t just a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist. He was a pretty good poet as well. Exhibit A is … Continue reading →