Literature

In today’s round-up of literary headlines, we look at The Guardian‘s picks for the best 100 novels of all time, the Barnes & Noble CEO’s stance on selling AI-written books, and more. The Guardian’s 100 Best Novels of All Time The Guardian has been rolling out its picks for the 100 best novels of all

THE BEST OF THE LITERARY INTERNET TODAY: In 1897, Oscar Wilde is released from Reading Gaol after doing two years of hard labor following being convicted of “homosexual offences.”  “It turned her overnight into a symbol—­a heroic outlaw to some, an un-­American terrorist to many more.” Zayd Ayers Dohrn remembers growing up with a mom

Book lovers with kids in their lives can’t help but be choosy about what books to place into the hands of young readers. We linger over fuzzy first memories of books, how they shaped our imaginations, how we thumbed through them time and time again, and how we lovingly and literally made our mark on

You may know him as Vizzini, the self-identified brains behind Princess Buttercup’s thwarted kidnapping. Or as Mr. Hall, the sexually frustrated Debate teacher who brings out the best in another blonde 90s icon. Younger fans may see him as Blair Waldorf’s step-dad, while the freshmen film nerds (c’est moi) first saw the twinkle during that

Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more. James Patterson Pledges $10 million to Early Adolescent Literacy Institute The mega-bestselling James Patterson has promised $10 million to his alma mater, Vanderbilt University. The institute will “work to address the increasingly urgent need for

What to Get the Soon-to-Be Barista in Your Life It’s graduation season. If you happen to have a favorite English major about to burst forth into the hard-scrabble, AI-invested, job-scarce media apocalypse, we salute you. But mostly them. If you’d like to celebrate their accomplishments and give them a minor boost in their new life,

Marcus Kliewer is the bestselling author of the horror novel We Used to Live Here. His second book, The Caretaker, is out now from 12:01 Books. Below, he discusses how writing horror led to his OCD diagnosis. I rediscovered my love for writing horror in the middle of the pandemic. It was oddly comforting to

The science fiction writer Dan Simmons passed away on Feb 21, 2026 at the age of 77. When I was living in Denver, working as a school teacher and attempting to break into novel writing, I got to know Dan a little bit. He lived in Longmont, Colorado and he had been an educator for

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Phil Calian, editor-in-chief of the Brown Daily Herald, could have worked at nearly any newspaper in the nation after he graduated in 1985. He had never considered an investment banking job—that is, not until Wall Street recruiters began appearing on Brown’s campus every week that spring. Calian applied to Merrill Lynch’s mergers and acquisitions department

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On Writing Without Measurement This first appeared in Lit Hub’s Craft of Writing newsletter—sign up here. I write prompts in the way someone else might write poems, micro-fictions, philosophical aphorisms, or other very small items of literature. Some of my prompts seem like paradoxical jokes: walk ten miles and write five words, or go across the room

Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more. Here are the biggest headlines from last week. Goodreads Has Lists on Lists on Lists of Summer Reading Recommendations The summer is around the corner, and Goodreads is not playing! They’ve just released seven different

THE BEST OF THE LITERARY INTERNET TODAY: In 1717, Voltaire is banished from Paris and sent to the Bastille. “The waxing and waning fortunes of languages are inevitably historical and political questions, and these questions are likewise delirium-inducing if we sit with them honestly.” The benefits of being a polyglot (as a fiction writer). |

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It was like any Monday morning at Seattle Central College, the community college where Stacey Levine has taught creative writing for fifteen years. Arriving at work, she sat down at her office desk—a bulletin board with lightly crumpled world maps pinned up behind her—and fired up Facebook. A friend from Elliott Bay Book Company, the

Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more. Deluxe Editions of HEATED RIVALRY Series Plus a New Cover First things first: let me just say that the series isn’t technically called “Heated Rivalry,” it’s actually called Game Changers—Heated Rivalry is the second book