THE BEST OF THE LITERARY INTERNET
- “Chalk it up to stubbornness. McGuane is as committed to his vision as his characters are to theirs.” Why Thomas McGuane is writing the most vital literature of the Trump Era.| Lit Hub Politics
- Jason Bell recounts the secret three-man mission that won the Allies World War II. | Lit Hub History
- What did Gertrude Stein, T. S. Eliot and Joan Didion really mean? On the histories of literature’s most famous lines. | Lit Hub Criticism
- Marion Gibson traces the real story behind 17th-century England’s witchcraft panic. | Lit Hub Religion
- “Reading Don Quixote is reminding me that at least a point of literature is to goof around.” Lincoln Michel on reading Cervantes’ masterpiece in 2026. | Counter Craft
- RFK’s ethics filing (lol) reveals, among other things, that Skyhorse Publishing has paid him a whole lot of money. | NPR
- Why do humans tell ourselves stories about dinosaurs? | Los Angeles Review of Books
- A concerned group of writers—including Claire Messud, Amitava Kumar, Katie Kitamura, and Alexander Chee—have signed an open letter to the University of the South in protest of the abrupt termination of Leah Stewart, the director of the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. | Sewanee Writers
- Maya Man applies the lessons of Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism to Olivia Rodrigo’s Daisy Chain Fields music festival. | Dirt
- Mahika Dhar explores the “fluid nonsensicality” of brainrot. | Public Books
- Patrick Redford revisits the story of the Spine Collector, the low-stakes scammer who risked it all to pull one over on the publishing world. | Defector
- Why the decline in literacy is directly linked to the decline of democracy. | Jacobin
- Bartolomeo Sala reports from the first academic conference centering the works of Umberto Eco since his death. | The Dial
- “I was struck by how many A.I. skeptics converged on the same formulation: what is this activity for?” Becca Rothfeld reports from the (surprisingly philosophical) Pro-Human Assembly. | The New Yorker
- Chris Kraus, Ben Eastham, and Elvia Wilk on being both critics and fiction writers. | Cultured
- Sarah Schulman reads Amy Littlefield’s Killers of Roe and considers the death of abortion rights in America. | Lux
- Josh Lambert and Dan Sinykin dig into PEN America’s misleading claims about antisemitism in publishing. | Jewish Currents
- Publishers might be happy about the $1.5 billion Anthropic settlement. Writers, not so much. | Vulture
- Gavin Francis surveys three recent books on male bodybuilding and looks at “the range and churn of today’s media landscape or the frenzied dialogue between online influencers and men in their neighborhood locker rooms.” | New York Review of Books
Also on Lit Hub:
Why recent ghosts are (actually) haunting us • Watch Angela Flournoy discuss The Wilderness, class, the internet, and more • William T. Vollmann on excavating American foreign policy • The legacy of Ernest Shackleton’s Antarctic expedition • Hernan Diaz explains why his new novel isn’t a dystopia • Exploring the relationship between a researcher and a librarian • Nina Schuyler on rivers, rights of nature, and her new book • How antiblackness functions as a social, historical and cultural phenomenon • “What if writing were fun?” • Happy International Translation Day! • Colm Tóibín reflects on the poetry of Thom Gunn • Why Silicon Valley’s technofascists hate democracy • September’s best book covers • September’s best reviewed books • Great new paperbacks coming out in October • Why fertility care is basic healthcare • Maris Kreizman pushes back against recent awards season whining • These 10 new children’s books should be on your radar • The women behind the March on Washington • This month brings new and notable poetry • The literary fare coming to streaming this month • 5 book reviews you need to read this week • The best sci-fi and fantasy books arriving in October • Parallels between American media’s treatment of the invasion of Iraq and the genocide in Gaza • Essential reading on women in the early Civil Rights Movement • What can we learn from the earth’s earliest soil? • The nuances of writing technology in fiction • In praise of Jimmy Stewart in It’s A Wonderful Life • Brittany Cavallaro on writing for (and teaching) young adults • Nine books with big secrets • Here is the cover for a forthcoming anthology of Florida writing