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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June 18, 2025

Today, Michelle Tea tells us about her favorite queer books, The Wizard of Oz reminds us why its legacy is so enduring, and we lament the decline of the semicolon.

On Lit Hub dot com:

Michelle Tea shares her favorite queer books and why “I feed on queer literature.” | Lit Hub Reading Lists
Ira Wells on the emergence of a modern book censorship movement in Pensacola, Florida: “Many board positions were not hotly contested, and almost anyone could show up at a school board meeting and command their five minutes of airtime.” | Lit Hub Politics
Hazel Gaynor explores America’s enduring obsession with The Wizard of Oz across literature, film, and more. | Lit Hub Criticism
“The memory of these fragments is always created, as a matter of reconstruction. And creation is always hope.” Joanna Walsh on the expansive possibilities of the short story. | Lit Hub Craft
“All season I begged to be taken on a fire.” Kelly Ramsey recalls her early days with the US Forest Service. | Lit Hub Climate Change
How did a fraudulent carpet dupe the art world for decades? On tracing the history of real and fake antique textiles. | Lit Hub History
Donna Seaman recommends seven books you need to read (about reading). | Lit Hub Reading Lists
Robert Finch remembers the challenging yet rewarding days spent during one summer in rural Newfoundland. | Lit Hub Memoir
“It was the most expensive boarding school in the world, the place where American rock stars and Middle Eastern sheikhs and Russian oligarchs sent their children to polish themselves with a European gloss.” Read from Heather Clark’s new novel, The Scrapbook. | Lit Hub Fiction

From around the internet:

And on top of everything else, the semicolon is in decline. | Smithsonian Magazine
“Offense has become so large and so accepted a part of our response to art that it can sometimes seem we’ve endowed it with unimpeachable authority.” Garth Greenwell on reading through bad feelings. | The Yale Review
“For others, however, the old-fashioned, ideal sort of reading—intense, extended, beginning-to-end encounters with carefully crafted texts—has become almost anachronistic.” Joshua Rothman on what reading has become in the age of AI. | The New Yorker
AI scraping bots have been knocking library collections offline. | 404 Media
Dana A. Williams recalls talking to Toni Morrison about her time as an editor. | Slate
Jon Repetti on Catherine Lacey’s The Möbius Book and why “invention and reality cannot be divided on a Venn diagram.” | Los Angeles Review of Books

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June 17, 2025

Today, we’re looking at American book bans, humming along to ABBA, and exploring the experience of being a working class person in a prestigious MFA program!

On Lit Hub dot com:

“Book ban cases have ramped up in recent years, and judges are flying blind, continuing to make guidance-free rulings.” Why Little v. Llano County threatens the already imperiled freedom to read in America. | Lit Hub Politics
Lee Cole recalls being a working class writer attending a prestigious MFA program and considers the absence of working class perspectives in our literary institutions. | Lit Hub Craft
Titles by Joyce Carol Oates, Dana A. Williams, Catherine Lacey, and more are among the 27 new books out today! | Lit Hub Reading Lists
Jane Alison praises Night, Edna O’Brien’s sexiest (and most forgotten) novel. | Lit Hub Criticism
“Her presence alone can transform a song into a drama.” Jan Gradvall sits down with ABBA’s iconic lead singer, Agnetha Fältskog. | Lit Hub Music
erin Khuê Ninh reflects on teaching Lois-Ann Yamanaka’s Blu’s Hanging: “In ethnic and feminist studies, understanding violence in its various forms and effects is core to the assignment.” | Lit Hub Criticism
Grace Flahive recommends essential Floridian books by Lauren Groff, Kristen Arnett, Dantiel W. Moniz, and more! | Lit Hub Reading Lists
Michelle Huneven talks about her novel, Bug Hollow, and writing a decade-spanning California family drama. | Lit Hub In Conversation
“And so it was told that the story of the Mikkola sisters started on the last day of December, on the last day of the millennium…” Read from Jonas Hassen Khemiri’s new novel, The Sisters. | Lit Hub Fiction

From around the internet:

Aaron Rosenberg revisits The Inheritors, an obscure sci-fi novel co-written by Joseph Conrad and Ford Madox Ford, which presaged Trump’s obsession with Greenland. | Jacobin
The British Library will (symbolically) reinstate Oscar Wilde’s reader pass, 130 years after its trustees cancelled it, when he was convicted for “gross indecency.” | The Guardian
Kaitlan Bui considers labor as horror and asks what fiction looks like after fascism. | Public Books
“It is a survival tool, a place of fantasy, a report on reality, and a utopia, all in one.” David Grundy explores Ted Joans’ revolutionary, surrealist poetry. | Poetry
“Genre fiction–of any kind–doesn’t have a reputation as a sophisticated context in which to write women.” B.D. McClay examines Fritz Leiber, Twin Peaks, and gender in genre fiction. | The Point
Merve Emre looks at the history of advice columns: “More than any other genre of public speech, advice brings strangers into scenes of intimate exchange.” | The New Yorker