July’s best book covers center stretched, blurred, and otherwise distorted images. | Lit Hub Design Books by Jamaica Kincaid, Samanta Schwebelin, Eimear McBride and more are arriving in paperback this month! | Lit Hub Reading Lists Colson Whitehead’s Cool Machine,
July’s best book covers center stretched, blurred, and otherwise distorted images. | Lit Hub Design Books by Jamaica Kincaid, Samanta Schwebelin, Eimear McBride and more are arriving in paperback this month! | Lit Hub Reading Lists Colson Whitehead’s Cool Machine,
Roger Celestin on writing about not being able to go home when “exiles belong to a world of smaller numbers.” | Lit Hub Craft Why “biblical notions of the wilderness” taught medieval European Christians to fear (and honor) the forest.
How is a fascination with Sylvia Plath like a fascination with true crime? Sarai Walker explores obsession, ownership, and Plath worship. | Lit Hub Biography “Even as a toddler, I’m awed by the mountains.” Emilee Hackney traces family history alongside
Why Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera’s home was a sanctuary for Leon Trotsky until it wasn’t. | Lit Hub Biography Look inside Bernie Sanders’s 2016 campaign with his chief strategist, Tad Devine. | Lit Hub Politics Max Lawton on writing
D/Annie Liontas, Sara Nović, Chet’la Sebree and Maria Adelman discuss the literary world’s unacknowledged class system. | Lit Hub In Conversation On that time Johnny Cash almost started a riot at California’s most infamous prison. | Lit Hub Music Why
Tarot reader Lisa Stardust examines Sylvia Plath’s relationship to her deck. | Lit Hub Criticism How the expectation that “books are now asked to function simultaneously as texts and as lifestyle objects” influences cover design in the social media era.
“Classical culture is a lot of things including, literally, rape culture.” Rebecca Solnit on the Odyssey and the Western literary tradition of silencing women. | Lit Hub Criticism Kōhei Saitō examines why solutions rooted in capitalism will never stop climate
Why writing alt text image descriptions is an act of literary translation. | Lit Hub Technology April Dávila explores the neuroscience of writer’s block (and what we can do to conquer it). | Lit Hub Craft How Langston Hughes, Zora
Why writing alt text image descriptions is an act of literary translation. | Lit Hub Technology April Dávila explores the neuroscience of writer’s block (and what we can do to conquer it). | Lit Hub Craft How Langston Hughes, Zora
Why more retellings of the Odyssey should center women: “We are like Penelope, unraveling Homer’s tale for our own purposes.” | Lit Hub Criticism How Jean-Paul Sartre and other French intellectuals came to embrace Marxism, to the horror of some
“For years I’ve been trying to obtain Greek citizenship, which, if one of your parents was born in Greece, can be, ostensibly, a straightforward process.” On experiencing your family’s homeland amid grief. | Lit Hub Memoir Fiona Sampson explores what
Henry Power tackles an age old question: How many Homers were there, actually? | Lit Hub History “The Odyssey is as relevant as ever it was. And I, for one, cannot wait for the next rendition of this story.” Rose
“Perhaps every sixteen-year-old boy needs a smart sister like Phoebe Caulfield.” Why Phoebe’s the real icon in The Catcher in the Rye. | Lit Hub Criticism Josh Cook, bookseller and founder of the Porter Square Review of Books, explores why booksellers
How it feels when one of your poems is literally going to the Moon. | Lit Hub Nature Why Steven W. Thrasher is suing Northwestern University (and the US government). | Lit Hub Politics “Put simply, people don’t buy books.
“I usually just write my way into things.” Eric Olson profiles Sigrid Nunez on the release of her collection, It Will Come Back to You. | Lit Hub Craft Angela Flournoy explores why Jean Said Makdisi’s Beirut Fragments “is less
How cell phone novels became the iconic genre among young writers on the Y2k internet. | Lit Hub Criticism “To drink is to enter of a labyrinth of romantic, thrilling, even glamorous myths; to give up drinking is to give
Zach St. George explores the wild scams of Australia’s snake venom con men. | Lit Hub History How activists Kevin Tubbs and Jacob Ferguson brought environmental liberation of the fae variety to America. | Lit Hub Climate Change “During his years
Remembering the great Tom Stoppard (and a night at the theater) on the occasion of his London memorial day. | Lit Hub Why do we love it when a new bombshell enters the villa? Anna Peele explores the eternal pantomime of
How Jane Austen subverted the kind of romance she mastered by writing Emma. | Lit Hub Criticism Lisa Owens explores the “taboo” ways women writers arrange the balance between creativity with family. | Lit Hub Craft Why do our public
How Joyce Carol Oates, queen of the literary internet, examines “the dispiriting effects of technology on contemporary life” in her new collection, The Frenzy. | Lit Hub Criticism Bryan Charles follows AI’s slow, steady invasion of literary translation. | Lit Hub
Michael Dirda makes the case for Moby-Dick as the ultimate American novel. | Lit Hub Criticism Why the “legendary” dinner party from Plato’s Symposium is actually about love. | Lit Hub Craft How medieval scribes engaged in writing as a spiritual
Why the Frederick Douglass speech we should revisit this July 4th isn’t the obvious one. | Lit Hub History These 10 great children’s books out in July include new work from Jaque Jours, Celeste Pewter, Sumayyah Beck and more. |
Get ready for part two! These are the 258 books we’re most anticipating in the second half of 2026. | Lit Hub Reading Lists We’re begging you to let Maggie Gyllenhaal adapt The Bell Jar. | Lit Hub Film Why Soledad
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