May 19, 2025

Today, we’re thinking about the literary partnership between Toni Morrison and Muhammad Ali, novelizing our obsessions with our therapists, and asking if Don Quixote is a feminist classic, actually?

On Lit Hub dot com:

Inside the “new kind of distinctly Black creative self-making” born from the editorial relationship between Toni Morrison and Muhammad Ali. | Lit Hub Biography
“The book really did start because I was obsessed with her, and I was telling her about it, and she was like, ‘Why don’t you go write about it?’” Adelaide Faith on turning an obsession with her therapist into a novel. | Lit Hub In Conversation
“There is no higher praise for a work of factual writing than to say that it reads like a John McPhee book.” Peter Hessler on a beloved mentor and tireless proponent of creative nonfiction. | Lit Hub Biography
Bryan VanDyke on inspiration versus plagiarism, Ursula Le Guin, and learning to love literary influences. | Lit Hub Criticism
Mariam Itani on Beirut, home, and the paradox of living in Jordan, from the latest issue of The Common. | Lit Hub Memoir
Lorna Graham recommends novels on the workplace by Chandler Baker, Bonnie Garmus, Calvin Kasulke, and more. | Lit Hub Reading Lists
Did Miguel de Cervantes’ illegitimate daughter, Isabel de Saavedra, influence the way he portrayed women in the “Quixote”? | Lit Hub Criticism
“Every morning since he left, the cold has awakened him just before dawn. He is shivering.” Read from Mathias Énard’s novel The Deserters, translated by Charlotte Mandell. | Lit Hub Fiction

From around the internet:

Columbia student Mohsen Mahdawi on ICE, activism, and Palestine after being released from detainment. | Democracy Now!
It’s been five years since the Harper’s cancel culture letter. David Klion wants to know: Why are so many of its signers quiet in the face of Trump’s assaults on free speech? | The Nation
Dafna Izenberg examines the relationship between Mavis Gallant’s fiction and journalism. | The Walrus
Hanif Abdurraqib writes in defense of despair. | The New Yorker
Kwame Anthony Appiah weighs in on the ethics of buying used books (and music). | The New York Times Magazine
“The NEA has always been threatened.” Adam Morgan on how the loss of NEA grants impacts small publishers and literary magazines. | Los Angeles Review of Books

September 12, 2025

May 19, 2025

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