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Lit Hub Daily

May 15, 2026

TODAY: In 1886, Emily Dickinson dies at age 55, with fewer than a dozen of her 1,800 poems published.

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Who are you Stacey Levine? And what happens when a “very weird” (very) small press novel gets nominated for a Pulitzer Prize? | Lit Hub In Conversation

Adrian McKinty reads Dan Simmons’s take on The Canterbury Tales, “a book for shy sci-fi nerds who are unable to talk to strangers on trains...” While on a train. To Canterbury. | Lit Hub Criticism

Lucy Ives offers prompts to help you write something you can’t measure. | Lit Hub Craft

Fresh from California, Cassidy Gard explains why she wouldn’t let Montana locals bring her down: “I had found a piece of heaven, and I was going to fight like hell to protect it.” | Lit Hub Memoir

Why investment banks are to blame for the rise of the yuppie. | Lit Hub Politics

Vanessa Hua’s Coyoteland, Barry Walters’s Mighty Real, and Christina Baker Kline’s The Foursome all feature among the best reviewed books of the week. | Book Marks

THIS WEEK ON THE HUB: What’s with all the nostalgia for Obama-era New York? · Florence Pugh stars in the first trailer for Zoe Kazan’s new East of Eden mini-series · American poet Sasha Debevec-McKenney has won the 2026 Dylan Thomas Prize

Ailsa Ross recommends books for insomniacs by Byung-chul Han, Annabel Abbs-streets, Samantha Harvey, and more. | Lit Hub Reading Lists

Tamiko Nimura recalls how family history and personal experience intersected while writing her memoir. | Lit Hub Craft

“In remodeling my writing practice, I also remodeled who I was, who I could be, as a writer.” How chronic illness changed Chet’la Sebree’s literary life. | Lit Hub Health

“He cooked and we ate our entire dinner including dessert out of one cast-iron frying pan, scooping up the last of the chocolate ice cream embedded with bits of grilled onion and potato.” Read from Hillary Behrman’s debut collection, Lake Effect. | Lit Hub Fiction

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“I realized that I felt more comfortable at the range than I did at literary events, where my reputation was premised on the revelation of my crimes, like a confessional.” Reginald Dwayne Betts on finding solace at a gun range. | The New York Times Magazine

Katharine K. Wilkinson considers what it means to feel at home in a changing world. | Orion

Alexandra Schwartz considers the “factual and dramatic lacuna” of Ben Lerner’s Transcription. | Broadcast

John J. Lennon remembers a mother-son relationship marked by two different kinds of prisons. | Esquire

Gideon Leek considers the post trauma-plot novel. | New York Magazine

Why people embrace hate, according to Sartre. | JSTOR Daily