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

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The ultimate summer books preview: The most-recommended summer reads, drawn from 28 reading lists and 437 titles.

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This week, we continue to excerpt the most acclaimed & award-nominated books of the year.

H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald
The Turner House by Angela Flournoy
Fortune Smiles by Adam Johnson
Hold Still by Sally Mann
Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson
Young Skins by Colin Barrett

#h is for hawk #helen macdonald #the turner house #angela flournoy #fortune smiles #adam johnson #hold still #sally mann #fates and furies #lauren groff #a little life #hanya yanagihara #excerpts #lit #the argonauts #maggie nelson #young skins #colin barrett

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A brief history of pet cemeteries, rituals, and how we mourn our dead pets. | Literary Hub
Lauren Groff on the politics at play in her NBA-nominated book, Fates and Furies. | Literary Hub
“You’re just going with the usual all-American fantasy? You don’t wish to banish any memory of the dead?” A short story by Ann Beattie. | The New Yorker
“I want, with all my heart, to preserve and celebrate what ISIS wishes to destroy: a multi-ethnic, multi-religious, multi-cultural life.” Laila Lalami responds to the attacks in Paris, Beirut, and around the world. | The Nation
If you, too, find yourself “often asking dance artist Haddaway’s timeless question, ‘What is love?’” – a new issue of The Scofield may help clarify. | The Scofield
“When I was little, my Mom had only one fear—that I’d grow up to be ordinary.” Short fiction by Etgar Keret. | Electric Literature
“The arts harness our sharpest senses, sight and sound, and our richest ways of understanding, in language and narrative.” An interview with Brian Boyd. | Guernica
Don DeLillo’s new novel, Zero K, will tackle eternal life (and be published in May). | LA Times
“I think [experimentation] should be used in order to make things, to expose things, and make them more legible.” Franny Choi on conceptual, slam, love, and empire-destroying poems. | Divedapper
The Oxford Dictionary, which brought language to its knees by declaring “selfie” and “vape” to be the words of the past two years, has officially declared it dead. | Newsweek

Also on Literary Hub: In praise of Georges Perec’s infraordinary Paris · Five books making news this week: Beatles, soldiers, and love letters · In Jakarta, 1968, from Leila S. Chudori’s debut novel, Home

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Books making news this week: awards season begins!

#negroland #margo jefferson #a brief history of seven killings #marlon james #paradise of the pacific #susanna moore #a little life #hanya yanagihara #fates and furies #lauren groff #lit #lit news #books making news

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Embedded with the super-rich: a photo essay from inside the world’s tax havens. | Literary Hub
Last but not least, the National Book Awards for Fiction longlist was announced yesterday and includes Lauren Groff, Angela Flournoy, and Nell Zink. | The New Yorker
“I was asked… to make my book seem more relatable to audiences, as if none of those audiences had people like me in them.” Mira Jacob on being asked to speak, and then ignored, as a writer of color. | BuzzFeed Books
A Löwy with a certain Kafka component vs. a true Kafka: an excerpt from Franz Kafka’s Letter to the Father. | Biographile
“What real person trapped in this novel wouldn’t become a drug addict?” Christian Lorentzen offers a dissenting opinion on the much-praised A Little Life. | London Review of Books
May our poems always be wild: on Ada Limón’s (National Book Award longlisted) Bright Dead Things. | The Millions
Reflections on “the women who bleed with me, bodies agape, arms longing for love” (Kate Zambreno, Chris Kraus, Michelle Tea, Lidia Yuknavitch). | Entropy
Jennine Capó Crucet on humor in literary writing, the first generation college experience, and literary shrines. | Fiction Writers Review
In which parallels are drawn between the generous nobility of dolphins and a writer’s coffee breaks. | The Sewanee Review

Also on Literary Hub: A Literary Long Weekend in San Francisco, full of bookstores and booze · Translating the language of political debate into plain English · Five things to see at the Brooklyn Book Festival · At that late great fleabag, the Starlight Hotel

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Fairy tales, furies, Franzen & Ferrante: 5 books making news this week.

#give us the ballot #ari berman #purity #jonathan franzen #the story of the lost child #elena ferrante #fates and furies #lauren groff #undermajordomo minor #patrick dewitt #lit #literature #lit news

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Debut novelists (and cousins!) Gabriel Urza and Sean Bernard on writing, family, and being Basque. | Literary Hub
Ursula K. Le Guin on not burning the past, insolent children, and craft that goes beyond “some little artisan putting the yeast in his handcrafted bread.” | Interview
A convoluted trail of bovine publishers leads us, perhaps, to a new Thomas Pynchon novel. | Harper’s
Seamus Heaney’s unpublished translation of Book VI of The Aeneid will venture up from the underworld. | The Guardian
Jonathan Franzen, a famous adversary of book clubs, has selected Kenzaburo Oe’s A Personal Matter for the one he is hosting. | The Wall Street Journal
Jesse Eisenberg sees writing and acting as similar (both involve “trying to understand the emotion underneath a character”) and different (“my stupid haircut is nowhere to be seen” in his debut collection). | Barnes & Noble Review
Artists over saints: on Truman Capote’s “elaborate self-portrait,” Music for Chameleons. | The Atlantic
Writing about the gross and the boring (marriage): an interview with Lauren Groff. | The Oyster Review
Today in the Best American Poetry debacle: the sister of Yi-Fen Chou condemns Michael Derrick Hudson’s “careless disregard for Chinese people” and Sherman Alexie expresses regret that it “has taken so much attention away from all of [the other] great poems.” Agreed on both counts. | The New York Times, BuzzFeed News

Also on Literary Hub: Charlie Brown as Gregor Samsa, on the 100th anniversary of The Metamorphosis · Ryan Berg namedrops all of our favorites: James Baldwin, William Maxwell, and Simon Le Bon · From Musharraf Ali Farooqi’s Man Asian Literary Prize shortlisted Between Clay and Dust

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An interview with Padgett Powell, in which an extended scatological metaphor perfectly describes the writing process. | Literary Hub
Valeria Luiselli’s infallible writing formula (Dickens + MP3 ÷ Balzac + JPEG) has produced a “genuinely delightful read.” | The Slate Book Review
Sprawling, stinking, and siding with Stein: an interview with Wayne Koestenbaum. | Hazlitt
Matthew Neill Null on his allergy to solipsism, the narrowing of literature, and the mysterious lives of animals. | Tin House
Lauren Groff, Alexandra Kleeman, Helen Phillips, Matthew Salesses, Steve Toltz, and Claire Vaye Watkins navigate verbal restrictions to describe their books, the writing process, dealing with hubris. | Salon
A person has a right to make a pun once in a while: on the importance of good editors and learning to let go of lesser lines. | The New Yorker
More speculation on the identity of the elusive Elena Ferrante: whether she is skeptical of critical theory or the product of feminist thought. | The Times Literary Supplement
Moral craft and creating without prejudice, or how to not write racist stories. | Electric Literature
We like our (male) geniuses tortured and, if possible, drunk: on drinking, gender, and self-destruction. | The New Republic

Also on Literary Hub: A conversation with Vu Tran on his genre-bending novel · Will literature survive our inevitable dystopia? · Inside The House of Twenty Thousand Books

#padgett powell #valeria luiselli #wayne koestenbaum #sarah gerard #matthew neill null #lauren groff #alexandra kleeman #helen phillips #matthew salesses #steve toltz #claire vaye watkins #elena ferrante #lit #lit news #lit hub daily