It was ninety minutes before opening and four hours before the lunch rush on the day in early March when Miguel called to say that although

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“It was ninety minutes before opening and four hours before the lunch rush on the day in early March when Miguel called to say that although he’d already arrived at the restaurant, he needed to leave immediately.” Read from Angela Flournoy’s new novel, The Wilderness.

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Ripeness

I took the train to Italy, of course. I was seventeen; it would be twenty years before I boarded my first plane, rushing to my mother’s deat

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“I took the train to Italy, of course.” Read from Sarah Moss’s new novel, Ripeness.

#new book #novel excerpt #new novel #sarah moss #ripeness novel #new fiction #literature #reading #books #publishing #lit hub daily #lit hub #literary hub

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August 26, 2025

Today, we’re exploring wedding singers, memoir controversies, ancient forms of writing, and more!

On Lit Hub dot com:

Writing someone else’s autofiction: how novelist David Levithan fictionalized musician Jens Lekman’s side hustle as a… wedding singer. | Lit Hub
Polly Atkin on nature writing, chronic illness, and the controversy surrounding Raynor Winn’s memoir, The Salt Path. | Lit Hub Memoir
“My mother came back. Which was good, since my father was about done with me.” Read “Intercom,” a prose poem by Richard Siken from the collection I Do Know Some Things. | Lit Hub Poetry
Nick Foster explains why it’s difficult to look towards the future without looking to science fiction. | Lit Hub Criticism
What ancient sales receipts can teach us about humanity’s earliest form of writing. | Lit Hub History
The 17 new books out today include titles by Helen Oyeyemi, André Breton, Richard Siken, and more! | Lit Hub Reading Lists
“While many English readers may be quick to assume that Tsujimura’s novels are meant to heal, the word most often used to describe her work in Japan is sasaru. It means stab, sting, turn a knife in my heart.” Yuki Tejima on translation as an act of sharing. | Lit Hub On Translation
Elaine Hsieh Chou discusses literary community, the search for open space, and experiences of multiple realities. | Lit Hub In Conversation
“A street ran by the house where she was staying in Phoenix, the house where she lived, the house where Eve and Al were paying ‘good money’ for her to be.” Read from Paula Saunders’s novel, Starting From Here. | Lit Hub Fiction

From around the internet:

Sloan Crosley dives into the bewildering world of celebrity children’s books. | The New Yorker
“Alice survived in and because of poetry. That, and love.” Nick Sturm remembers Alice Notley. | Poetry
Is the literary industrial complex worth the cash? On the scam of ‘luxury’ writing retreats. | Slate
Victoria Song struggles to understand why generative AI tools are necessary for journaling. | The Verge
How Constantine Cavafy became poetry’s original influencer. | The New Republic
Riley MacLeod recaps New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani’s scavenger hunt. | Aftermath

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August 25, 2025

Today, Ahmed Dader writes about surviving famine and massacre in Gaza, Richard Siken talks about line breaks, Sheila Heti gets sincere, and more.

On Lit Hub dot com:

Ahmed Dader describes the horrors of surviving the Flour Massacre in Gaza: “I will need years for the scenes of that night to fade in my memory.” | Lit Hub Memoir
Richard Siken talks to Poets.org about his new collection, I Do Know Some Things, and the line break as “the most fundamental poetic device.” | Lit Hub In Conversation
How Jane Bowles’ Two Serious Ladies influenced Sheila Heti to write (and live) sincerely. | Lit Hub Criticism
“There are many ways to reflect on the United States before and after colonization, but few people do so exclusively in terms of fire.” How River Selby unexpectedly became a wildland firefighter. | Lit Hub Nature
Nicholas Boggs talks to Danté Stewart about his new biography of James Baldwin: “We need his perspective through the lens of love right now, because hate, obviously, is everywhere.” | Lit Hub In Conversation
Jamie Lee Searle reflects on the rich challenges of translating genre and gender blurring in Kim de l’Horizon’s Sea, Mothers, Swallow, Tongues. | Lit Hub On Translation
“It was one of those things we couldn’t say to one another. I had told Father, Father had told Mother, Mother must have told you.” Read from Kim de l’Horizon’s debut novel Sea, Mothers, Swallow, Tongues, translated by Jamie Lee Searle. | Lit Hub Fiction

From around the internet:

“I think it’s important to remember how important Black women were to him.” Kaitlyn Greenidge talks to Nicholas Boggs and Jessica B. Harris about James Baldwin’s lovers and friends. | Harper’s Bazaar
Jon Allsop proposes the Moomins as “an antidote to the toxicity of much modern internet discourse.” | The New Yorker
H.M.A. Leow explores how Western travel writing doubled as propaganda during the Second Sino-Japanese War. | JSTOR Daily
Gordon Marino examines the philosophy of boxing. | The Point
“Designers built gadgets for the innovation class, while residents of Flint, Michigan, drank poisoned water.” How Americans soured on the idea of innovation. | The MIT Press Reader
Luisa Suad Bocconcelli recommends nine recent books by women writers from the Maghreb and its diaspora. | Words Without Borders

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August 21, 2025

Today, we’re dishing out some literary advice, looking back on 20 years of Beasts of No Nation, exploring the history of lesbian pulp novels, and more!

On Lit Hub dot com:

Katie Kitamura revisits Beasts of No Nation after 20 years: “There is never the benefit of hindsight, the reassurance of a given outcome, or anything other than the rapidly fading innocence of a child.” | Lit Hub Craft
Trish Bendix explores the history of lesbian pulp, and how queer writers and readers carry its legacy into the present. | Lit Hub Criticism
Is it wrong to cheat on your literary novel with a secret (and fun) fantasy project? Kristen Arnett answers this and other burning questions. | Lit Hub
Yet even though she shared Eleni’s name, it wasn’t until Eleni’s smiling face appeared on the presentation screen that I comprehended that this scholar was my aunt.” Natalie Bakapoulos shares lessons from discovering her family’s place in queer Greek literature and activism. | Lit Hub Memoir
But the women themselves lovingly called the bags in which they carried their uniforms “‘freedom bags.’” How Black women used purses at the service of civil rights. | Lit Hub History
“These and 11 other pieces ventriloquize a chorus of white American grotesques across the sociopolitical spectrum.” 5 book reviews you need to read this week. | Book Marks
Khadijah Queen’s TBR features Linda Hogan, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Sinclair Lewis, and more! | Lit Hub Reading Lists
“By the end of her climb her thighs cramped, her left foot ached, and Grandma Blue was an angry bull.” Read from Antonio Michael Downing’s debut novel, Black Cherokee. | Lit Hub Fiction

From around the internet:

Elissa Altman looks back on her lifelong love affair with guitars. | The Bitter Southerner
“The ur-loneliness is at the heart of Airless Spaces. Mental illness is the metaphor of choice, but the author has something more encompassing on her mind.” Vivian Gornick considers Shulamith Firestone’s life and work. | Boston Review
Rebecca Mead explores the reemergence of Sally Carson’s 1934 novel, Crooked Cross, and its relevance alongside the rise of global fascism. | The New Yorker
“Accusations of terrorism are automatically serious because our capacity for terror is intrinsic.” On Palestine Action and how governments weaponize proscription against activists. | The Baffler
Why typos have become “a reassuring sign of human authorship.” | Slate
Rhoda Kwan examines two newly translated novels that document grief and pain in China’s past. | Los Angeles Review of Books

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August 19, 2025

Today, we’re going dark academia, reading early Octavia Butler, contemplating careers in clowning, and more!

On Lit Hub dot com:

“She became fascinated with how human beings—especially those who didn’t have much power—could empower themselves and others and change the world.” What Octavia Butler’s early writings reveal about her trajectory as a literary icon. | Lit Hub Biography
Charlie Jane Anders explains just how much dark academia owes to A.S. Byatt’s Possession. | Lit Hub Criticism
The 20 new books out today include titles about Octavia Butler, James Baldwin, and more! | Lit Hub Reading Lists
“Are poets useful?” Raymond Antrobus on deafness, writing, and finding a purpose. | Lit Hub Memoir
River Selby talks to Jane Ciabattari about fighting fires, sending messages to her past self, and writing trauma in memoir. | Lit Hub In Conversation
“Horses were a part of the daily fabric of life for many enslaved Black people.” On the importance of the horse in escaping slavery. | Lit Hub History
Zhang Yueran on how her family’s nanny inspired her novel, Women, Seated: “I knew that Jiao might leave us someday.” | Lit Hub Craft
“The mass of all Ruth knew was a dot in the void.” Read from Kate Riley’s new novel, Ruth. | Lit Hub Fiction

From around the internet:

Vivian Gornick considers “the solipsism of low self-esteem… So inexplicable is its grip, so binding its influence, it can feel almost mythic.” | The New Yorker
Angelina Mazza makes the case for the unexpected pleasures of a “merciless hellscape overrun by petty, perpetually aggrieved readers,” Goodreads. | Slate
“When Richard and I hit the Play button on Kanopy, I didn’t know we were in store for a work of art as tender as it is beautiful.” Laurie Stone rewatches Paper Moon. | The Paris Review
Han Zhang on exposing American readers to Chinese literary fiction and challenging fixed perceptions of Chinese books. | NPR
April White explores efforts to archive the life and career of Lulu Adams, clown extraordinaire. | JSTOR Daily
How a group of Michigan parents fought back against right-wing activists in their school district. | The New Republic

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August 13, 2025

Today, we’re reading about the real whale behind Moby-Dick, seeing what history can teach us about fighting dictators, examining how sex ed emerged from the AIDS epidemic, and more!

On Lit Hub dot com:

Margaret Grace Myers examines the grim legacy of Ronald Reagan and how the AIDS epidemic laid the foundations for sex ed in America. | Lit Hub Politics
“Hunger now governs time. It becomes the unrelenting measure by which each hour is known.” Alaa Alqaisi on life in Gaza through the lens of WB Yeats’s “The Second Coming.” | Lit Hub Criticism
Sam Wachman on the challenges of writing a novel about the war in Ukraine and literature as “a force for peace and solidarity.” | Lit Hub Craft
Tobias Wolff reflects back on 30 years of Adrienne Salinger’s Teenagers in Their Bedrooms: “The humanity of these young faces implies a depth of feeling and experience that their histories confirm.” | Lit Hub Photography
Tim Queeney explores ropemaking, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Mocha Dick, the real life inspiration behind Herman Melville’s iconic white whale. | Lit Hub History
“How are free people supposed to stay free? One short answer: don’t trust anyone over thirty.” On Thomas Paine’s guide to fighting dictatorship. | Lit Hub Politics
Jane Ciabattari talks to Jessica Francis Kane about exploring the life of Penelope Fitzgerald through fiction. | Lit Hub In Conversation
“What had gone wrong with me didn’t start out with the car. It didn’t end with the car, but the car played a serious part.” Read from C. Mallon’s new novel, Dogs. | Lit Hub Fiction

From around the internet:

On the existential horrors of storytelling through AI companionship. | Wired
“The scenes of prison break from Khiam to Sednaya offer us a glimpse into a possible, yet precarious freedom.” The trajectory of prison liberation and abolition across the Middle East. | The Baffler
Riley MacLeod plays Tiny Bookshop, a bookstore management simulation game. | Aftermath
“After the disastrous meeting, he began asking around about where an original golden ticket from the 1971 Willy Wonka movie, a highly valuable collector’s item, could be pawned.” What do crypto bros have to do with Ronald Dahl? It’s a (really) wild story. | New York Magazine
Take a look at some of Mary Ruefle’s erasure texts, which she’s been making “almost daily” since 1998. | The Paris Review

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August 11, 2025

Today, we’re exploring the complexities of trying to become a parent, how working at a grocery store can help your writing, Charlotte Brontë’s shyness, and more!

On Lit Hub dot com:

Chloé Caldwell recounts the humor and tragedy in trying (and failing) to conceive. | Lit Hub Memoir
“Am I a writer first, or a grocer?” Karleigh Frisbie Brogan explains how working a non-literary day job helped her writing. | Lit Hub Craft
The influence of friendship, community, and shyness on Charlotte Brontë’s storytelling. | Lit Hub Biography
Madeleine Beekman traces the mysterious evolution of language from early humans on. | Lit Hub History
How abortion bans escalate risks of life-threatening violence: “For some people, you’re basically risking your life to try to make an appointment.” | Lit Hub Politics
Ellyn Gaydos explains the contentment of reading books about babies as a new mother, including titles by William Carlos Williams, Annie Ernaux, and more. | Lit Hub Criticism
“The hearse is parked in the driveway, back doors wide open. A few of us wait around for the body to be brought out.” Read from Beverly Gologorsky’s new novel, The Angle of Falling Light. | Lit Hub Fiction

From around the internet:

André Aciman recommends some of his favorite “psychological” novels. | The New Yorker
“I found in their poetics an understanding of the “outside”: the gender outside, the class outside of mainstream culture and mainstream writing.” Roberto Bedoya on Norma Cole and the poetics of place. | Poetry
Beloved bother: Hannah Engler considers her connection to her great-uncle, and the unexpected power of a typo. | Longreads
Elad Uzan explains why AI will never understand human morality. | Aeon
“Fascists will not stop us from drawing what must be drawn, from expressing what we believe in.” Look inside an iconic comics and zine festival in Rome. | The Comics Journal
In 1795, Samuel Taylor Coleridge almost “bid farewell forever” to writing. | The Guardian

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August 6, 2025

Today, we’re looking into the future of small presses, making couscous fritters, reading books for David Lynch lovers, and more!

On Lit Hub dot com:

Elizabeth Cook examines the futures of small presses after the federal government’s “uncertainty, disrespect, and bullying” around NEA grants. | Lit Hub Politics
Khadijah Queen recalls the calm and stormy waters of writing poetry aboard a navel destroyer. | Lit Hub Memoir
“Yet those who grew up in Palestine remember this dish not with pity, but with deep affection as a flavor of comfort and a taste of home.” Sami Tamimi shares a modern take on Palestinian couscous fritters. | Lit Hub Food
Vanessa Roveto recommends books for lovers of Lynch’s Mulholland Drive by Marguerite Duras, Leslie Scalapino, Joyelle McSweeney, and more. | Lit Hub Reading Lists
“In a broken world, Harold believed in that endless love.” Chronicling the horror and aftermath of the 1985 Georgia Church Murders. | Lit Hub History
Read “Black History Minute,” a poem by Harryette Mullen from the collection Regaining Unconsciousness. | Lit Hub Poetry
How linguistic archeologists link humanity through the shared origins of modern languages: “I find all this oddly comforting, the way these connections reveal how others before us have puzzled over their own experiences and tried their best to make sense of them.” | Lit Hub History
“Girlie was, by every conceivable metric, one of the very best.” Read from Elaine Castillo’s new novel, Moderation. | Lit Hub Fiction

From around the internet:

“We can hardly make sense of the idea of the end of the world without attending to all the other worlds that ended before our own.” Roy Scranton considers life in a perpetual apocalypse. | The Baffler
Niela Orr profiles Jamaica Kincaid, self-described “amateur writer.” | The New York Times Magazine
Tao Lin shares parts of his college diary. | The Paris Review
Sarah Brouillette considers Emma Cline’s resistance to trauma writing: “The trauma plot and the slut-shaming dossier are actually parallel formations, reveals The Guest.” | Public Books
“Good Mrs. Shakspaire, I beseech you to consider of the business [that] was left in trust [to] your husband by Mrs. Butts for the children.” Charles Nicholl examines what is (maybe) Anne Hathaway’s first known correspondence. | New York Review of Books
On the largely forgotten art of crafting artificial eyes. | The MIT Press Reader

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August 4, 2025

Today, we’re thinking about Octavia Butler, wondering why “Jane Austen is a tease,” considering the (potentail) corruption of presidential libraries, and more!

On Lit Hub dot com:

Aaron Boehmer examines the hope in human connection and Octavia Butler’s “speech sounds.” | Lit Hub Criticism
What Jane Austen’s most mundane possessions reveal about her literary (and life) ethos. | Lit Hub Biography
Nell Stevens on a 19th-century scandal and the exploration of different worlds through fiction: “There is something utopian about the possibilities revealed by the Tichborne case—for social disruption and reinvention.” | Lit Hub History
“I knew more about Scottish settler Norman McLeod than I did about my own ancestors, was more comfortable in a kilt than in a korowai.” Shilo Kino on how Witi Ihimaera’s The Whale Rider introduced Māori culture to the world. | Lit Hub Criticism
B.A. Shapiro on mining the endlessly fascinating lore of art history to write multiple works of fiction. | Lit Hub Craft
Read “Reading,” a poem by Emily Skillings from the collection Tantrums in Air: “ It was as if without these markings / she couldn’t understand what was written.” | Lit Hub Poetry
“The sun was half bright, half warm, half full.” Read from An Yu’s new novel, Sunbirth. | Lit Hub Fiction

From around the internet:

Jon Allsop looks into the potential for corruption inherent in Presidential libraries. | The New Yorker
“Hans Christian Andersen possessed a certain genius — not merely in the fecundity of his lurid imaginings, but in his talent for identifying a child’s primal terrors.” Sadie Stein’s love-hate relationship with the writer of “The Little Match Girl.” | The New York Times
Harrison Stetler looks at Bertolt Brecht’s anti-war sentiments through a new production of Mother Courage and Her Children. | Jacobin
Betsy Golden Kellem explores the bizarre history of the Automaton Chess Player. | JSTOR Daily
Jack Skelley and Philippa Snow discuss writing two books at once, a love/hate relationship with pop culture, and more. | Interview

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July 31, 2025

Today, we’re rounding up our favorite cover designs from July, previewing August’s literary film and TV, looking at the best reviewed books of the month, and more!

On Lit Hub dot com:

Peepholes, drips, and bold colors: these are July’s best book covers. | Lit Hub Design
The literary film and TV coming to a streaming service near you in August includes an Outlander prequel, classic 90s teen flicks, and more! | Lit Hub Film
“There is something about comedy that just makes for good fiction because it’s about there being a disconnect between expectation and actuality.” Jessie Gaynor interviews Eric Puchner. | Lit Hub In Conversation
Gary Shteyngart’s Vera, or Faith, Sophie Elmhirst’s A Marriage at Sea, Michael Clune’s Pan, and Tim Weiner’s The Mission all feature among July’s best reviewed books. | Book Marks
Our friends at AudioFile Magazine share their most anticipated audiobooks in August. | Lit Hub Reading Lists
“Did you ever hear about the woman who jumped onto the subway tracks in New York, after a little boy who’d fallen in?” Read from Samsun Knight’s new novel, Likeness. | Lit Hub Fiction

From around the internet:

Philip Luke Johnson looks at two recent novels that “uncover the overlooked intervals” of Mexican history. | Public Books
Zhang Yueran and Wei Hui discuss censorship, artificial autobiography, and tradition. | Granta
The construction of a Robert Soros frankenmansion is killing the vibe at Left Bank Books. | Curbed
Today in “books no one asked for”: John Fetterman will publish a “raw and visceral” memoir this fall. | The New York Times
Daniel Felsenthal considers a new collection of Essex Hemphill’s poetry and his “liberationist spirit.” | The Nation
“Despite their differences in practice and philosophy, these authors all shared something—a desire for self-sufficiency, yes, but also their yearning.” On Jean Craighead George and Thoreau. | Orion

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July 30, 2025

Today, we’re thinking about what Chekhov has to do with Gaza, lying as fiction, J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace at 25, and more!

On Lit Hub dot com:

“If God were like Chekhov, I would be consoled.” Philip Metres on Gaza, wildfires, and the privileges of misery. | Lit Hub Criticism
“Letters, rants, lists. ‘It’s not a fixed thing,’ he says of such forms. ‘It’s ephemeral.’” Eric Olson profiles Ed Park. | Lit Hub Craft
Kate Weinberg explains why the first time she told a lie was also her first attempt at fiction. | Lit Hub Criticism
Daniel Saldaña Paris’s TBR includes books by Gustav Flaubert, Yiyun Li, Francesca Wade, and more. | Lit Hub Reading Lists
Tom Zeller Jr. explores how medical misogyny impacted the practice of neuroscience (and the treatment of migraines). | Lit Hub History
“At home, I woke up in the middle of the night, turned over for a while, gave up on the acrobatics, and got up. Apparently watching Richard die at work didn’t improve my sleep patterns.” Read from Kashana Cauley’s new novel, The Payback. | Lit Hub Fiction

From around the internet:

“Some of the recipes are perfectly simple, and some of them are just bonkers and fantastic.” A dinner party courtesy of Alice B. Toklas. | The New Yorker
Louise Matsakis explores the context of language and explains why ChatGPT can go “demon mode.” | Wired
“What freshly nuanced perspectives might we bring to the violent late 20th-century history Coetzee describes?” A roundtable on J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace at 25. | Public Books
Rachel Kushner considers the relationship between literature and prison. | NYRB
Why the future of climate change is the present in Mauritius: “When the government told us to go back home it was already too late. Throughout the town water rose to our knees, our thighs.” | The Dial
H.M.A. Leow examines how conflict between “editorial grip” and “literary autonomy” shaped Lin Yutang’s 1948 novel Chinatown Family. | JSTOR Daily

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July 29, 2025

Today, Ed Park tells us about loving Zabar’s strudel, graphic memoirists discuss motherhood, and more!

On Lit Hub dot com:

Mathelinda Nabugodi explores the violent history of consumerism and colonial power in the 18th-century Caribbean and the human cost of producing sugar. | Lit Hub Food
“Parenting often feels just beyond language. It’s very, very hard to describe the joy and the pain of it.” Four graphic memoirists discuss what cartooning motherhood means to them. | Lit Hub Art
“if gender be a place / let me be everywhere but there.” Read “On Bilocation,” a poem by Remi Graves from the collection coal. | Lit Hub Poetry
The 16 new books out today include titles by Rax King, Remi Graves, Amy Odell, and more! | Lit Hub Reading Lists
Ed Park tells us about strudel from Zabar’s, reading 19th century horror, and his favorite books to gift. | Lit Hub In Conversation
“I feel I should clarify about the nuns.” Read from Claire Adam’s novel, Love Forms. | Lit Hub Fiction

From around the internet:

Richard Brody makes the case for the traditional review, calling it “the most inherently progressive mode of arts writing.” | The New Yorker
Nick Ripatrazone considers Marshall McLuhan’s prescient warning about the electronic world. | Slate
Angelo Hernandez Sias on the “cursed” attempts at translating José Donoso’s The Obscene Bird of Night. | n+1
“Sally’s argument for sex and liquor is born not of an oppositional stance to the real world of war and politics, but of an indifference to it.” On Cabaret’s opposition to fascism (and aloofness towards it). | JSTOR Daily
Soraya Sebghati examines the canon of 21st-century Iranian cinema. | Los Angeles Review of Books
Raina Telgemeier and Scott McCloud discuss creative community building and encouraging the next generation of cartoonists: “The blank page to me is a pretty powerful symbol for what it’s like to be a kid who’s just beginning to create a rough draft for their own world.” | The Comics Journal

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July 24, 2025

Today, we’re showing love to indie booksellers, examining how the algorithm came for democracy, asking what makes a transgressive comic, and more!

On Lit Hub dot com:

Benjamin Balthaser on Mike Gold, Alexander Bittelman, and the historical erasure of Jewish working-class anti-Zionism. | Lit Hub Politics
Why, in an age of book bans and assaults on public libraries, indie booksellers are more essential than ever. | Lit Hub Bookstores
“Although people often believe that borders are designed to keep others out, more often, it is us that they keep trapped in.” Melody Glenn takes an expansive lens to the opioid epidemic. | Lit Hub Health
Aron Solomon unpacks how democracy took the hit in a struggle against algorithms. | Lit Hub Technology
Terry Nguyen explores faith, desire, and the literary landscape of conversion experiences. | Lit Hub Religion
“There can be no dispute about how fortuitous it is that we are here today as free, conscious entities, able to think and experience and love.” Simon Boas considers the ways fate, circumstance and privilege influence how we live. | Lit Hub Memoir
“I prophesied spring’s early arrival. I prophesied the word diabetes in the movie theater, a whole minute before it happened. Is that improbable? Science fictional? No.” Read from Michael Clune’s new novel, Pan. | Lit Hub Fiction

From around the internet:

Helen Chazan asks, what makes a comic transgressive? | The Comics Journal
Sarah Blackwood revisits Work: A Story of Experience, the feminist workplace novel in which Louisa May Alcott “asks what counts as freedom for women.” | The New Yorker
“This is what the rivers told me: that life is always and utterly lived in flow and in relation.” Robert Macfarlane and Terry Tempest Williams in conversation. | Orion
Lola Seaton on Sheila Heti and the illusion of effortlessness. | New York Review of Books
Sarah E. Bond examines the far-right’s obsession with ignoring antiquity’s queerness. | Hyperallergic
“I’m scared of it.” Josh Rottenberg talks to screenwriters about AI. | Los Angeles Times

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July 16, 2025

Today, we’re going surfing, celebrating the art of not knowing, looking into the history of DMT, and more!

On Lit Hub dot com:

“But the hastily scribbled note in the corner of the photograph recalls an exchange I had forgotten, marks the moment, and situates me and Austin in the time and space of that first encounter.” Darcy Ballantyne on the process of finally meeting her father, the novelist Austin Clarke. | Lit Hub Memoir
Mickie Meinhardt hits the waves with Bonnie Tsui to talk about muscle. | Lit Hub In Conversation
Issa Quincy explains the delightful tension of writing a novel without planning (or even knowing anything). | Lit Hub Craft
“If all life living now has a common ancestor, if her body has DNA in common with seahorses, lemurs, honeybees, those bodies aren’t just other ‘animals.’ They’re her siblings.” What the material world can teach about the false binary between humans and our surroundings. | Lit Hub Nature
Andrew R. Gallimore traces the surprising history of DMT, nature’s most alien psychedelic. | Lit Hub Science
Why Belle Époque Paris drew artists and travelers from every corner of world: “So seductive were these visions of cultural excellence that, to an aesthete, Paris was unbeatable…” | Lit Hub History
“Ahh, the eighties! The rich who had retreated to the suburbs were coming back to town and were willing to pay for it.” Read from Mark Kurlansky’s new novel, Cheesecake. | Lit Hub Fiction

From around the internet:

From groceries to travel destinations, Mira Ptacin examines the poetry of found lists. | Longreads
Tim Bousquet traces how a tech startup takeover ended a beloved alt weekly’s golden age. | The Walrus
Eric Benson explains why UFOs are all the rage: “My first reaction was that this all seemed quite bonkers. I was close to walking out of the room.” | The Baffler
Andréa Becker on her new book and why the fights for reproductive rights and gender-affirming care are inextricable. | The Nation
“The exceptional clarity of this lived paradox is what we begin reaching for. So much for conjoinment.” Michelle Chan Schmidt explores the politics of togetherness and separation in Hon Lai Chu’s novel, Mending Bodies. | Public Books
Andrea Gibson has died at 49. | The Guardian