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

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A very entertaining interview with Jerry Stahl, an old new Dad. | Literary Hub
The authors of the best books of the year (according to Publishers Weekly) present the other best books of the year (according to themselves). | Publishers Weekly
National Book Award winners Adam Johnson and Ta-Nehisi Coates discuss Tupac holograms and fusing poetry and journalism, respectively. | The New York Times
Wherever you go for the rest of your life Paris stays with you: Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast, copies of which are being left as tribute to the victims of the Paris attacks, has become a bestseller in France. | NPR
A “smutty romp” with T.S. Eliot: On Eliot’s never before published “Improper Rhymes” and martial poems. | New Statesman
“A rock band, from a certain point of view, is an ideal vehicle for poetry.” On Richard Hell’s Massive Pissed Love, a descendant of the Romantics. | Hyperallergic
Words don’t need visas, but humans do: Molly Crabapple on translating Syrian poet Nizar Qabbani and the loaded fiction of citizenship. | VICE
More lost writing by a famous author (William Faulkner) has been discovered! And published!! | U.S. News & World Report
To ease their frustration with novellas, the New Yorker is launching an online-only feature for them. | The New Yorker

Also on Literary Hub: When setting trumps character: writing about place · Inside Housing Works Bookstore Cafe, the largest community-based AIDS service organization in the country, also serves Mensuration Brownies · From Elizabeth Tallent’s new collection, Mendocino Fire, “Briar Switch“

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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