“‘There are certain historical moments when learning is more compressed and intense than others,’ wrote Howard Zinn, a month after 9/11. The historian was writing in a moment of tremendous, escalating violence, and he sensed more death and destruction looming. Zinn could hear a familiar melody in the drum taps coming out of the White House, from the pages of the New York Times, and in the academic institutions where he taught. His line about certain historical moments has been ringing in my ears. Compressed learning continues to exact a horrid cost.”
June 16, 2025
Today, we’re thinking about the brutal business of fact-checking, finding yourself in queer historical fiction, and the future of climate writing!
- Isabel Ruehl considers Austin Kelley’s novel The Fact Checker and the business of truth. | Lit Hub Criticism
- Why John le Carré’s work is more relevant than ever: “He is not an idealist—he knows these men and women are doomed—but an existentialist who dramatizes the necessity of individual struggle.” | Lit Hub Politics
- Diana Arterian explores the life and death of Agrippina the Younger, the obsession behind her new poetry collection. | Lit Hub Craft
- Phil Melanson on writing queer historical fiction and seeing yourself in the past. | Lit Hub Criticism
- Dylin Hardcastle recommends books that capture the expansiveness of queer love by Alana Portero, James Baldwin, Lars Horn, and more. | Lit Hub Reading Lists
- When art imitates life: Who was the real woman behind André Breton’s Nadja? | Lit Hub Criticism
- “Antiquity was not in good repute everywhere.” How monks preserved classical culture and paved the way for the Renaissance. | Lit Hub History
- Why Dante and a collegiate technical writing class inspired Robert P. Baird to embrace the humanities. | Lit Hub Craft
- “The sun sinks low as I follow my brother up the deer path from the river.” Read from Evanthia Bromiley’s new novel, Crown. | Lit Hub Fiction
From around the internet:
- “The enormity of climate change generates a conceptual boundlessness that can outstrip any single writer’s capacity for inventiveness.” Keith Woodhouse considers the future of climate fiction. | Public Books
- (Doctor-writer) Danielle Ofri explores the long tradition of doctor-writers. | The New Yorker
- “There’s a tabloid soap opera that Goth’s casting conjures, her real-life entanglements mirroring an Austenian plot tailor-made for TMZ.” On cinematic adaptations of Jane Austen’s novels. | The Paris Review
- Jessica Bennett profiles E. Jean Carroll, who wrote a secret book. | The Cut
- The apocalyptic relevance of C.F. Ramuz’s Into the Sun after a century. | 3:AM
- “What if they make us suffer? What if we make them suffer? Each prospect is horrifying in its own way…” On AI, Martha Wells, and a history of robots in literature and film. | The New Yorker
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April 25, 2025
Today at Lit Hub, we’re getting excited for Indie Bookstore Day, meditating on the political future of science, and wondering why we love reading about toxic female friendships!
- Ginny Hogan on why we love to see the beauty and disappointment of toxic female friendships on the page and the screen. | Lit Hub Criticism
- Today on the Lit Hub podcast, we’re celebrating Indie Bookstore Day! | Lit Hub Radio
- Gabrielle Bellot reads Zoë Schlanger’s The Light Eaters and wonders if scientific innovation will be possible in Donald Trump’s America. | Lit Hub Science
- Hannah Zeavin on class, race, gender and how caregivers disrupt the fiction of the nuclear family. | Lit Hub History
- “In the end, we are all cursed, cursed by oil’s ease, seduced by its possibilities.” Don Gillmor on the impact of our addiction to oil. | Lit Hub Politics
- Joan Didion’s Notes to John, Marie-Helene Bertino’s Exit Zero, and Emily Henry’s Great Big Beautiful Life all feature among the best reviewed books of the week. | Book Marks
- “She was familiar with ‘my kind’—a young Black man striving to exist within the frame of societal and familial expectations.” Doug Jones on community as a queer Black writer. | Lit Hub Craft
- Casey Johnston explores the “uncomfortable reality” of writing about the body. | Lit Hub Craft
- “I’ve moved to this city to wait for the end of the world. The conditions couldn’t be better.” Read from Antonio Muñoz Molina’s novel Your Steps on the Stairs, translated by Curtis Bauer. | Lit Hub Fiction
From around the internet:
- Was this Montana woman the first enfant terrible of American letters? Hunter Dukes on “the wild woman from Butte.” | Public Domain Review
- “Even at the point of annihilation, Lem allows for the possibility of revelation.” Marat Grinberg considers Stanisław Lem as a Jewish writer. | Los Angeles Review of Books
- José Olivarez and Jon Sands remember Aziza Barnes: “No one else sounds like them.” | Poetry
- Heather O’Donnell on the legacy of Belle da Costa Greene, one of history’s most iconic librarians. | New York Review of Books
- “At some point in our acquaintance, he greeted me by kissing me fully on the lips, and from then on, this was our ritual, a smooch.” Jesse Barron on Gary Indiana and his final novel. | Granta
- Why Sophie Gilbert wants you to stop fetishizing Y2K pop culture. | The Cut
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What is a woman? According to the CDC, all women are in danger of becoming pregnant. 'Drinking too much can have many risks for women,' their chart tells us, and itemizes them for 'any woman.' 'Injuries/violence' top the list and 'unintended pregnancy' brings up the rear. 'Drinking too much can have risks for women including… any alcohol use for women who are pregnant or might be pregnant.' Medical professionals should 'advise a woman to stop drinking if she is trying to get pregnant or not using birth control with sex.' This in a few deft, simple strokes reduces all women to fertile females in their breeding years who have what you might call exposure to fertile men. It denies the existence of many other kinds of women and the equal responsibility of at least one kind of man. Maybe it denies the existence of men, since women seem to get pregnant here as a consequence of consorting with booze, not boys.
Rebecca Solnit, The Case of the Missing Perpetrator, on the site today
- Amy Gustine’s advice for writing what you don’t know. | Literary Hub
- Francisco Goldman in conversation with Idra Novey about violence, humor, and North American naiveté. | Literary Hub
- “I was a world removed from the beautiful, spangled, over-rewarded life I’d been mired in, and almost immediately, to my utter astonishment, I started to get productive writing done.” John Wray recalls moving to New York. | BuzzFeed Books
- Nikkita Oliver and Danez Smith performed on the Late Show; Macklemore was there too. | Rolling Stone
- Italy’s leading TV production company has announced they are making a series out of the Neapolitan novels, so sign up for your Italian classes now. | Hollywood Reporter
- “By translating something you’re implicitly recommending it.” An interview with the translator of Roberto Bolaño and Álvaro Enrigue, Natasha Wimmer. | Broadly
- “Why do we like what we like? What’s the relation between beauty and truth?” A.O. Scott on tackling big questions. | Electric Literature
- “It’s a bit surprising—given the trend to read exclusively women or non-white authors—more attention isn’t given to indigenous populations.” Become familiar with some indigenous writers through a new blog series. | Ploughshares
- Multiple acts of form and function, threaded together with theme: Four essay collections worth reading. | The Millions
- “By two in the morning, I was becoming familiar with the physicality of the all-nighter.” Carmen Maria Machado on staying up all night. | Catapult
Also on Literary Hub: A Phone Call from Paul: Jhumpa Lahiri on family, banality, and the art of conversation · Librarian Confidential: Polli Kenn on why you really need a library card · Two new poems by Fred Moten · The Hunger: from Greg Baxter’s Munich Airport, now out in paperback
#amy gustine#writing#francisco goldman#idra novey#ways to disappear#john wray#nikkita oliver#danez smith#the late show#macklemore#neapolitan novels#elena ferrante#my brilliant friend#roberto bolano#alvaro enrique#natasha wimmer#a.o. scott#indigenous writers#essays#essay collections#carmen maria machado#paul holdengraber#a phone call from paul#jhumpa lahiri#libraries#librarians#polli kenn#fred moten#poems#poetry
Publishers Lunch & Buzz Books present 117 books to look forward to in the spring/summer season.