From Psycho to Christine, a highway is something “altogether different when they appear in the horror genre: there they expose themselves as highways to hell.” | Lit Hub Film Fake news, far-right propaganda, exaggerated crowd sizes, a squabbling left. Sound
In 1836, Charles Dickens hooked the good people of England on a story about a traveling men’s group. Published over two years in 19 installments, The Pickwick Papers launched a craze for serialized fiction. The trend found traction across the pond. Later
Author Andreas Malm has been denied entry to the United Kingdom on the grounds that his “presence in the UK is not considered to be conducive to the public good,” according to The Guardian and Al Jazeera. Malm was traveling
How AI is dragging us towards a future that rips the body out of body horror. | Lit Hub Technology October’s best book covers aren’t spooky, but it’s scary how much we love them. | Lit Hub Design Liz DiGregorio
When you walk into the Salvador Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, Dalí himself will greet you. He appears on a life-sized screen, mustache waxed, and talks about his life and his work. He tells anecdotes. He answers questions in
There are films that you seem to live inside. Ninety minutes and change of what transpires on the screen singes your mind’s eye and once it happens, it stays. When the lights switch on and the credits roll, you are
I. Taking to the Open Road Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road, Healthy, free, the world before me, The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose. These words of Walt Whitman’s—from his poem “Song of
Imagine your body—flesh and blood, muscle and bone—cast aside as mere refuse, and your brain “immersed in a liquid of the nature of cerebro-spinal fluid” inside a cylinder. Thus goes the dark prophecy of Irish physicist John Desmond Bernal nearly
Another month of books, another month of book covers. What my favorites from October lack in spookiness, they make up for in clever color stories, delicious textures, and a little bit of cheek. Here are my picks for the best
Most poetry-lovers know classic horror poems by writers like Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson and Percy Bysshe Shelley. But there are also many eerie poems written by poets who aren’t known specifically for their gothic or horror writing. Some of
When you think of the Brontës, maybe you should think of botany. | Lit Hub Criticism Cundill Prize finalist Beth Lew-Williams recommends essential reading on Chinese American history by Erika Lee, Gordon Chang, Brianna Nofil and more. | Lit Hub
All photos by Emily Feng The story began like this: I was moving back to the United States, after having lived abroad for the last ten years, working as a foreign correspondent, and while all my belongings were being shipped
Over the Atlantic Ocean: May 4, 1937 Ernst Lehmann had transported some interesting creatures in his time as a zeppelin captain—prize Trakehner horses from Prussia; gorillas, chimpanzees, and monkeys used in scientific research; guinea pigs; canaries; carrier pigeons; even queen
From Abraham Lincoln’s first day as president, he had declared secession unconstitutional, the Confederate movement an insurrection, and their cause inhumane. Secession, he remarked in an early message to Congress, was “rebellion thus sugar-coated,” based on “the farcical pretense of
Often, I don’t notice it: the nameless narrator. Because I write nonfiction, I rarely include my own name. Why would I? It’s right there. It’s only when I finish a novel and try to Google a question that I realize
In late May of 2022, the COVID pandemic was not completely over, but many countries, including the United Kingdom, starting lifting restrictions on travel. And so, after a transatlantic flight and a LNER train, in what felt like a state
My career as a writer—and life writ large—took a dramatic turn when I received a contract to write My Two Italies in 2011, my first book for general readers and a swerve from the more academic work I had done
Every year I begin the semester by asking my college students, “What do you know about Asian American history? What have you been taught?” The most frequent answer I get is (a sheepish): “nothing.” When pressed, students will usually recall
In this conversation, two sociologists discuss how to balance personal perspective with an academic approach to memoir. From writing, to reading, to teaching memoir, these authors offer a unique perspective on the growing role of memoir in the academy and
George Washington Carver Technical High School was dedicated in 1943, the year its namesake died. Several administrative offices and a few class-rooms had since been renovated. Anthony was in one such classroom: there was a ceiling fan. It was last
Is it or isn’t it? James Folta considers how generative AI is poisoning the literary well for everyone. | Lit Hub Technology “The embodied realm is eager for inquiry, if one is willing and interested.” Emily Hyland praises the poetics
I’ll let you figure out which, but one of these jokes had to be updated right before publishing. The news simply refuses to stop, folks. Hopefully this weekend will be restful for you—personally, I’ll be taking inspiration from these Polish
What do movies like What Does That Nature Say to You, A Poet and Late Fame reveal about how we view poets? “The poets don’t need the movies as much as the movies need characters who still have something unruly
We probably already have the definitive film about an artist for this decade, in Ira Sachs’s Peter Hujar’s Day. The idiosyncratic biopic makes the right choices, giving us in a sliver of time the dailiness of a working life with
This deeply personal project—Rebels with a Cause—is a photographic book that captures the 1960s, a formative period of American history when groups of rebels initiated a series of changes and started a revolution unlike any other. The book is our
The tenth anniversary edition of Peter Brown’s middle grade novel The Wild Robot is available now from Little Brown Book for Young Readers, so we asked him a few questions about reading aloud, feedback from young readers, and reasons to be
What’s something you think national conversations get wrong about rural attitudes or rural people? This is the somewhat dreadful question the publicist for my book asked. She lives in Brooklyn and struggles with what to make of me, what to
Gripping the worn steering wheel of my old pickup truck, I head southwest from Fairbanks, Alaska, as I have done at least once a year for the past twenty-five years. My field truck is working hard to maintain a decent
This first appeared in Lit Hub’s Craft of Writing newsletter—sign up here. There’s a great artist called Bobby Fingers whose YouTube channel documents him making insanely detailed sculptures of celebrities, taking the viewer on a journey through his creative process as he
You’ve heard of cottagecore, but what about bogcore? Anna North introduces you to the genre via work by Annie Proulx, Kay Chronister, Seamus Heaney and more. | Lit Hub Criticism Why are publishers suing big tech with one hand and
For years Phillip Tennent lived at the edge of the sea, where artefacts were washed up every day. Scavengers, professional and otherwise, came and went. Turnover was higher than you’d expect given the relaxed lifestyle, the constant good weather, the
Last weekend I had a little stagefright before I was set to appear on a panel about authorship and AI for an event called Whose Truth? Writers and Readers Forum presented by the Authors Guild. I had a feeling I’d
Bogs are big right now. Fashion designers are dipping couture in peat; memes on Instagram offer help choosing your bog witch name. Internationally bestselling authors are (figuratively) mining wetlands for inspiration. The bog and its cousins the swamp and marsh
In the summer of 2021, as the Covid-19 pandemic was finally slowing down, my teenage son and I took a trip to Italy. Travel restrictions had been lifted only a few days before, and Rome was almost entirely empty of
Anyone who reads the news or has logged onto social media is aware of the cult of personality around North Korea’s Kim dynasty. From afar, it’s almost cartoonish, with the bronze statues and the funny haircuts and the penchant for
There are epiphanies. Posts of stern nonfictions. There arise in us strong love affairs with feedback. The id a remarkable botulism. And what about shuttered domestic spirits. A proclivity for baskets of stone- colored kittens. Rooms ticking with taxidermy. That
Southern California’s perennial sunshine rarely penetrated the ground-floor lockup of the Los Angeles county jail. On the best of days a dank stillness would have encased the adobe chamber and those confined within. And this was the worst of days.
“Kids five and up get in free the first Sunday of the month,” Matt said. We were at Barcade in downtown New Haven, across from Elm City Games, for a date night in late February. Matt was my neighbor in
Whoa there, weary traveler! Sit awhile and hear my news. Tell me, have you heard of the Emperors of Narsil? The Mandoran Invasion of Brethony? No? What of The Skalbard Coast? Cranholt on the Mersana River? Pharazel Maheris’s “Lives of
The Irish novelist known for nailing Millennial relationship psychosis and speaking up about Palestine told The Guardian this morning that she can no longer sell her novels in the United Kingdom. This news follows Rooney’s much-publicized support for Palestine Action,
How newspapers helped democratize knowledge (because reading isn’t just for the rich). | Lit Hub Politics Is it or isn’t it? James Folta considers how generative AI is poisoning the literary well for everyone. | Lit Hub Technology Oksana Lutsyshyna
Vauhini Vara, who has for years been investigating the impact of AI on writing, published a piece in The Atlantic over the weekend that suggested it was probable that “The Blue Fighter,” a Caine Prize-winning short story, was written using
The painted white room was born out of an episode of introversion, in an act of creative defiance. On a night in London, a British interior designer and architect named Edward William Godwin holed up in his room to ponder
There is a moment in every young person’s life when they encounter someone who makes them believe that the world can be different—that they can be different—and nothing is ever the same again. For me, that moment came because of
By the end of the Middle Ages, it was a broadly accepted truth that women were running around Europe who had been seduced by Satan and then enabled to perform wicked magic in his stead. Numerous treatise writers began to
Have you ever wondered why your rent is so damn high? Ask any economist or housing expert and they’ll tell you the reason is simple: There’s not enough housing. Too many tenants are competing for too few units, which drives
Among the gifts bestowed by my long relationship with a wild deer, chronicled in Penelope: A Love Story, (Crown) being published October 13, was an opening of the spirit, a freedom from human/animal boundaries. This seems to be recognized by
Literacy is not a deus ex machina descending helpfully from the clouds to usher in a new, more just political order. At the beginning of the twentieth century Germany had been regarded as one of the most literate and civilized
Bringing the New York School to middle school: Why Frank O’Hara is the perfect way to introduce poetry to tweens. | Lit Hub Criticism Adam Johnson talks to Amitav Ghosh about The Wayfinder, the many ways to tell a single
When I taught poetry, I always arrived with pencils, pieces of paper, and a printed out poem by Frank O’Hara. If my students, middle schoolers forced to cram into libraries and over-filled classrooms, had heard of any poets before, O’Hara
The Center For Fiction welcomed Pulitzer Prize-winning author Adam Johnson (The Orphan Master’s Son) to The Center for Fiction this fall to celebrate the release of his new novel, The Wayfinder. This must-read novel urges us to consider how struggles
I was a sophomore at the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars undergraduate program when I first encountered Stephen Dixon. Some details I recall from his small and intimate class in the basement of Gilman Hall were his ink-stained pants pockets, and
I have covered many wars in the past but nothing—absolutely nothing—prepared me for the brutality, cruelty, and the sheer savagery of Israel’s war in Gaza. I wasn’t alone. Veteran colleagues at Al Jazeera—battle-hardened reporters who had walked the ruins of
Elizabeth Zott, the feisty 1960s-era chemist in Bonnie Garmus’ mega-selling first novel Lessons in Chemistry, captivated readers with her early feminist point of view and transformative approach to hosting a TV cooking series. Batter Gray, an aspiring poet from Yuba
As a kid, I got easily spooked. We lived on the edge of a creaking, bubbling, swampy-dark woods; at night, my mom sang “The Unquiet Grave,” a haunting folksong where a young woman begs her dead lover to speak to
Yiyun Li, Bonnie Garmus, M. John Harrison, Will Maclean, and so many more apt and intelligent writers are releasing novels today. Adam Grant, Lauren Michele Jackson, and Wendy S. Walters all number among the plentiful nonfiction authors also releasing new
Smolensk, Russia, February 1837 and February 1860 Belatedly, John’s last words reached Adelaide. He had been dead for a fortnight, buried for ten days. She was not at his deathbed, having been banished from their marriage bed for decades; nor
Samantha’s all grown up, and American Girl books are entering a new era. | Lit Hub Criticism How British media legitimized J.K. Rowling’s transphobia: “We are rendered hostile abstractions in a contradictory narrative: Trans people are not real, only our
Morgan Entrekin attends the Heinrich Maria Ledig-Rowohlt Translation Prize dinner at the Frankfurt Book Fair. | Lit Hub On Translation Demetris Papadimitropoulos considers the complex relationships between queer people and their families through reading Families We Keep and Families We
Recently, President Donald Trump banned three media organizations from the White House because of their negative coverage of him and his administration. “I mean, there’s something wrong with a country that can allow people to write purposely negative stories,” Trump
This first appeared in Lit Hub’s Craft of Writing newsletter—sign up here. In 2006, when I started writing the book that would eventually become my debut novel The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman, I shared my first, tentative pages with a
Cross-stitch watercolor by Demetris Papadimitropoulos When Aly changed hir name, hir mother heard more than a new set of syllables. Margaret told researchers in Rin Reczek and Emma Bosley-Smith’s study that she felt Aly had “divorced the whole family.” Before
Jean Echenoz’s Jérôme Lindon recounts, in sixty spare, affectionate, sometimes lightly barbed pages, the twenty-year relationship that its author enjoyed with his publisher, a legend of the French literary establishment. The story begins in 1979 with an unexpected summons to
The first summer after my daughter died, I received an email invitation to give a keynote address the next spring. I didn’t know the scholar who invited me, but she’d been told that my daughter had recently died and offered
It began when I heard a sentence: “He wanted to talk again, suddenly.” The words cut sharply into the jumble of to-do lists, fantasies, snippets of possible writing, worry, and leftover traces of postpartum depression that constituted my mind in
Annie bought a fifth of whiskey from the liquor store beside the Starbucks because money was imminent, and because Vera’s addendum had knocked something loose that needed fixing, the image of her lips against Tom Selleck’s mustache, again and again,
Translator and writer Lin King released a statement on Instagram on Tuesday laying out her claim of copyright infringement of her Booker-Prize-winning English translation of Taiwan Travelogue by Yáng Shuāng-Zǐ, originally written in Mandarin and titled Táiwān Màn Yóu Lù
Extra, extra. You’ve seen the headlines. Men—particularly straight men—have stopped reading fiction. This year saw the rise and fall of the performative lit-bro. And though history, crime, and self-help books still persuade a certain type, the most recent NEA survey found
Last week the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, which oversees the districts of Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and the Virgin Islands, upheld and further underlined a lower court ruling in the ongoing AI and copyright case of Thomson
Today, the Swedish Academy awarded the 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature to Canadian author Anne Carson, for “her bold and inventive oeuvre that in playful dialogue with the classical tradition has created new forms for contemporary literature.” The Academy’s permanent
The decades-long friendship between Hannah Arendt and Mary McCarthy was defined by a “mix of intimacy and worldliness.” | Lit Hub Biography Kimberly Blaeser on being an Anishinaabe poet in a fiction writer’s world: “I write fiction with a poetic
Hannah Arendt’s homeland was populated with friends, most of them men—at least that is what her published correspondence would lead you to believe. The published letters between Arendt and her friends include books with Martin Heidegger, Karl Jaspers, Heinrich Blücher,
Forty years ago in October 1986 I attended my first Frankfurt Book Fair. On the first day of meetings my friend and colleague Gary Fisketjon and I were introduced to Heinrich Maria Ledig Rowohlt, an elegant, charismatic 78-year-old German publisher
We don’t usually understand literature as a dialogue. Typically, when publishing professionals think of readers, they think they need to entice them to buy the book so they may have hours of pleasant or enriching cultural entertainment. The author’s name
Hello again! Welcome back to the finest (and drunkest) corner of the internet, home of the darling and daring sensation known as Am I the Literary Asshole? If you’re a first time reader, we’re a bimonthly advice column that tackles
Tonight, at a ceremony in New York City, Kirkus Reviews announced the winners of the 13th annual Kirkus Prize, which awards $50,000 to “books of exceptional merit” in three categories: Fiction, Nonfiction, and Young Readers’ Literature. The winners were chosen
This week, the Caine Prize for African Writing, which awards £10,000 annually to the best short story by an African writer living on the continent or in the diaspora, announced the 2026 winner: Zimbabwean writer Simbarashe Steyn Kundizeza’s “The Blue
“As trans people, each articulation of who we are is also an articulation of who we will no longer be.” Sanam Sheriff meditates on trans poetics and the failure of language. | Lit Hub Craft On the immortality of Anne
In 1971, eight years after Sylvia Plath died, a dispute over the backstory of her death broke out between her husband Ted Hughes and the poet and critic Al Alvarez. Alvarez, a friend of Plath, published a book which, in
Beginning on Thursday, August 27, all days blur into one long, endless air raid alarm. 13 air alarms a day, lasting 872 minutes. The next day—12 alarms, lasting 634 minutes. The next—10 alarms, lasting 644 minutes. And so it goes
It is quite rare to find someone who is a first-class academic and analyst, and is also able to become a first-class activist, but Leah Stokes is a triple threat. A political scientist at UC Santa Barbara, she wrote the
If a body is undocumented, should we be surprised if the war against that body is undocumented too? The ugly truth of deportation is it is a war. An American war predicated on the same things as previous American wars:
I’m not really interested in wrestling with what defines a classic. It’s the kind of question that fills up think pieces and podcasts with bouts of teeth gnashing and hand-wringing and endless rumination on the Western canon. But let’s agree
If there is one thing that the last decade ought to have taught us, it is that strong objective factors do not automatically translate into powerful movements, let alone into the spontaneous discovery of the correct line by the masses.
Señorita Rio stands out as a particularly groundbreaking character, an actor of Latinx heritage who gives up the glitz of Hollywood for the danger of espionage. Created by writer Joe Hawkins and artist Nick Viscardi (also known as Nick “Cardy”)
Today, the National Book Foundation announced the finalists in all five categories—Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Translated Literature, and Young People’s Literature—for the 2026 National Book Awards. The winners will be announced at the 77th National Book Awards Ceremony & Benefit Dinner
How much money would Mr. Darcy be worth today? Inger Sigrun Bredkjær Brodey investigates. | Lit Hub History Barbara Kingsolver explains why she writes standing up and answers more of our questions about literary life. | Lit Hub In Conversation
Many readers are perplexed by Austen’s habit of indicating men’s fortunes in terms of annual income, while women’s fortunes are expressed as a lump sum. Mr. Darcy has an estate of £10,000 per annum, for example, while Emma Woodhouse has
Everyone was in town for the wheat Convention. Kansas City, Power And Light. Our first night I came out Of the hotel bathroom to find him With the sheets pulled up to his chin, Saying in a small high voice,
Partita, by Barbara Kingsolver, is available now from Harper, so we asked her a few questions about her writing life. * What time of day do you write (and why)? Once I’m seriously into a writing project, I tend to wake
Despite being a book that revolves around a cryonically-frozen (dead) father being transported two thousand miles in the back of a U-haul, Adam Wilson’s Fail Sons is laugh-out-loud funny. It might be aimed at a certain subset of readers—it helps
Ultra-human characters, swift pacing, fluidity of action, a casual yet precise plotline, and sharp dialogue are centerpieces of Fair Ones, Lydia Millet’s new double novel. She maintains the sardonic edge evident in most of her work, including her 2025 story
The Blind Man on Bloor Street On my second day in Toronto, buffeted by the wind, taking a morning walk, dwarfed and darkened in the shadows of the first tall buildings I’d seen in Canada, I came abreast of a
I was no virgin when I met my husband, and he knew it. We have been monogamous, but I wouldn’t call myself chaste. (I can hear my friends guffaw.) Pleasure brings me no shame. Books gave me strength to be
In my forthcoming debut novel, the Four Wives and Five Deaths of Richard Milford, nearly every terrible thing that can happen to a man has happened to the titular character, a terrible person in his own right. The beginning of
The Bayeux Tapestry is now on display in England’s British Museum, and the hottest ticket in London right now is a chance to peek at a nearly century old piece of fabric art. Whether you’ve gotten to view the Tapestry,
In honor of Banned Books Week, the American Library Association (ALA) has published a list of the 150 most challenged books documented between 1990 and 2025. The ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom tracked 4,235 challenged titles last year, the second-highest
On the Saturday morning of Labor Day weekend, my best friend Dani, also a writer, wrote to tell me that Robin Morgan, the landmark American feminist activist, organizer, and writer, had died. In the midst of the rush to finish
How British media legitimized J.K. Rowling’s transphobia: “We are rendered hostile abstractions in a contradictory narrative: Trans people are not real, only our violence is real.” | Lit Hub Politics Samantha’s all grown up, and American Girl books are entering
Preserved like frozen eddies in the whirlwind of a moral panic are the words of a national journalist, days after J.K. Rowling publishes her essay on the threat of the trans rights movement. Shona Craven’s newspaper article “This Is Why
