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Lit Hub Weekly

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“The beginning of democracy requires a transport into a necessary fiction.” Judith Butler on why democracy needs the humanities. | Lit Hub Politics

Gabrielle Bellot on how the linguistic erasure of trans people also erases them from history and life: “To only refer to “LGB” history, then, isn’t just a petty linguistic choice. It erases history, creating a new, bowdlerized version of that history instead, a revisionist past in which people like me were not present.” | Lit Hub

What Robert Frost’s intellectual and literary influences reveal about his artistic philosophy. | Lit Hub Criticism

What do Mark Twain, Virginia Woolf, and Walt Whitman have in common? They self-published. | Lit Hub Craft

From small-town sweethearts to POWs and codebreakers in WWII, this couple’s courage and love collide in a shocking twist of fate. Dive into this epic and inspiring novel based on true events.

Gabrielle Schwarz considers Elaine Aron and what it means to be a highly sensitive person. | Dirt

“If language is consciousness and humans are a ‘place-loving species,’ then place-names—toponyms—may mold a larger piece of our minds than we think.” Joshua Jelly-Shapiro ponders naming as power, from the Gulf of Mexico to New York City’s streets. | Broadcast

Hanif Abdurraqib considers Bartees Strange’s new album, Horror. | The New Yorker

“It strikes me that neither my father nor I, nor the people encountered on this trip, nor my grandmother in that city in northern China, worship the past.” Aube Rey Lescure on returning to China. | Granta

Sean Hooks talks to Claire Messud about This Strange Eventful History, art discourse, and “the amazing complexities of what we can express and convey in language if people will only make the effort and take the time.” | Public Books

Mitch Anzuoni chronicles the search for The Spiritual Hunt, Rimbaud’s lost manuscript. | The MIT Press Reader

From the author of White Horse (“Twisty and electric.” —The New York Times Book Review) comes a terrifying and resonant novel about a woman who uses her unique gift to learn the truth about her sister’s death

“They are all-accommodating, embracing all interests, contradictions, revisions, distractions, irrelevances; they permit one to explore everything and release one from the burden of having to conclude anything.” Jared Marcel Pollen on Montaigne’s essays. | The Point

Noor Anand Chawla considers the sociological impact of E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India. | JSTOR Daily

Mark Greif explains why government employees should hold the line: “In a bureaucratic showdown, heroism need not be grandiose.” | n+1

On Eduardo Torres and Augusto Monterroso’s The Rest is Silence. | The Baffler

“His underlying point that no serious ideological competitor to liberal democracy would emerge stands strong.” Michael A. Cohen revisits Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History. | The New Republic

From the author of The Echo of Old Books Barbara Davis comes a powerful novel of a mother and daughter trying to reconcile their relationship. To find closure with the past, Mallory Ward returns home—to her mother’s secrets and finds that trust is hard to repair.

The rise and fall of #girlboss feminism • Sarah Lyn Rogers examines the speaker as a mask in poetry • The hidden activist life of Betty Friedan • Drawing inspiration from Sergei Bondarchuk’s iconic War and Peace adaptation • On the political power of American countercultures • Rebecca Romney’s quest to unearth Jane Austen’s influences • Emily J. Smith meditates on emails from her dad • What novelists can learn from playing Elden Ring • How the Pilgrims influenced modern ideas about migration • How walking helped Simone and Hélène de Beauvoir make art • The prescient genius of WG Sebald’s Rings of Saturn • How Americans can keep the rising tide of fascism at bay • RaMell Ross on adapting Colson Whitehead • The merits of escaping into old television • The psychology behind why humans need independence and connection • This week on The Lit Hub Podcast • How to be funny when writing a novel • How Jimmy Breslin and Langston Hughes reacted to the assassination of Malcolm X • Neel Mukherjee talks to Eli Zuzovsky • How Little Richard brought Black and queer culture to American music

When we designed the curriculum for this program, we wanted to include not only a flexible, individualized approach to craft, but also practical guidance on finding ways to sustain your writing life. Our program focuses intently on craft and revision. We also offer practical guidance in publishing, teaching and building a sustainable life as a writer. We’re committed to creating an inclusive literary community, and our goal is to help you find your own unique approach to writing.