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Lit Hub Daily

August 28, 2025

TODAY: In 1749, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is born.

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As AI invades classrooms, Joelle Renstrom looks back on the most human of study guides, CliffsNotes. | Lit Hub Criticism

“Somebody wrote an article online that shit talks Fidel.” Profiling the cyber soldiers who crush internet dissent in Cuba. | Lit Hub Technology

Huda Fakhreddine on Paul Celan and the necessity of Gaza to poetry: “If time must continue on its course after this, then it cannot but course toward a free Palestine.” | Lit Hub On Translation

Maris Kreizman explains why books aren’t the solution to building empathy, but they definitely help: “We’re stuck in a moment when passive entertainment rules, when books are viewed by the ruling class as strictly utilitarian.” | Lit Hub Criticism

“Academia is a hellscape; Katabasis just makes it literal.” 5 book reviews you need to read this week. | Book Marks

Kelly Sundberg recommends titles to read for your new life by Saeed Jones, River Selby, and more! | Lit Hub Reading Lists

What if all the ice on earth suddenly melted? “Everything about this epoch is superlative, bizarre, unprecedented.” | Lit Hub Climate Change

“They come under immediate assault from sandflies. Emil is beating them off his neck and shins the whole way, but it pleases him how well he manages the exertion.” Read from Olufemi Terry’s new novel, Wilderness of Mirrors. | Lit Hub Fiction

NEW FROM THE AUTHOR OF
THE LESSER BOHEMIANS

The City Changes Its Face is an intense story of passion, jealousy and family from the trailblazing, award-winning novelist Eimear McBride.

“Lovers in London, but make it daringly modernist and inventive and odd.” –Literary Hub

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A middle school teacher shares his strategy for engaging reluctant readers. | The Washington Post

“To remember is to risk punishment”: Sajad Hameed and Rehan Qayoom Mir report on India’s book ban in Kashmir. | Jacobin

Ahmad Almallah on the poetics of Palestine, American hypocrisy, and writing “between linguistic borderlands.” | Asymptote

“I’ve since come to think of guilty pleasure only when I think about terrible beauty.” On the entwining legacies of climate change and family history in California. | Nautilus

Tate McFadden interviews Sam Szabo about queer cartooning and comics history: “I always think about my creative process as being two channels in my brain. One is memoir and one is gags.” | The Comics Journal

Ruthanna Emrys and Anne M. Pillsworth read The Lifted Veil, George Eliot’s angsty tale of emo telepathy. | Reactor

“ESSENTIAL READING. A COMPANION FOR TURBULENT TIMES.” –LAURA VAN DEN BERG

Internationally bestselling author Miriam Toews’s memoir of the will to write—a work of disobedient memory, humor, and exquisite craft set against a content-hungry, prose-stuffed society.

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BRILLIANT STORIES FROM ED PARK

A wildly imaginative story collection that slices through the absurdity of modern life with wit, heart, and invention—from the author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist Same Bed, Different Dreams.