Fiction
This Impossible Life
On the outskirts of the 3rd Mainland Bridge, the old lady dropped Alohan off. For the weeks following, he wandered around, vagabonding the peripheral roads stemming out of the bridge…
FictionA quiet shelf of new writing
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Interviews
“Hello Daughter”
Lori hadn’t heard from Freddie in a week or so. She wasn’t even sure if she had her daughter’s current address. They don’t talk that much, but she says hi every week, and Freddie…
Fiction
Watching The Librarians With Librarians During Banned Books Week
On Tuesday, Oct. 6, in the middle of Banned Books Week, three intrepid high school seniors—Laird Bowser, Alec Thomsen, and Devin Protti—spearheaded a sold-out benefit screening of the…
Fiction
17 Books About Native American Culture to Read This November
University presses have played an important, if complex, role in the history of Native studies and more than 80 members of the Association of University Presses (AUPresses) currently…
Writing & Publishing
What It Means To Be a Basque Writer
“There is no such thing as an ugly language. Today I hear every language as if it were the only one, and when I hear of one that is dying, it overwhelms me as though it were the death…
Fiction
Olivia Laing on Chronicling the World of 1970s Italian Cinema
Step into the world of The Silver Bookwith Olivia Laing, award-winning author of The Lonely City, Everybody, and Funny Weather, as they discuss their spellbinding new novel of art…
Writing & Publishing
Writing Iran’s January Massacre in a Non-Mother Tongue
To our readers: These notes were written, in conversation with one another, in the immediate aftermath of the January 2026 massacre in Iran and the concurrent internet blackout. For…
Nonfiction
This Week in Literary History: America’s First Lending Library Gets its First Ten Members
In 1731, Benjamin Franklin had an idea. At that time, in colonial America, books were rare, and prohibitively expensive for most people—not to mention the fact that they took forever…
Writing & Publishing
How Online Fandom Made Me a Writer
Growing up, I always preferred fictional worlds to the real one. As an only child who struggled with social anxiety and was very muchnotathletically inclined, I spent most of my…
Fiction
What is the Best Literary TV Adaptation of All Time?
Who says TV rots your brain? These days, it delivers its fair share of great storytelling, whether original or adapted. But this is Literary Hub, after all, and so as the weather gets…
Fiction
Lit Hub Daily: November 9, 2026
TODAY: In 1953, Dylan Thomas dies. What’s the best literary TV adaptation of all time?Vote in the first round of our bracketto help your favorite shows make it to the top! | Lit HubIf…
Fiction
You can now buy the ashes of Truman Capote’s dog
The late Truman Capote left behind a prodigious amount of novel drafts, New Journalism, and frenemies when he died in 1984. He also, you might not be surprised to learn, left behind a…
Fiction
M. John Harrison’s The End of Everything has won the 2026 Booker Prize
Today, at a ceremony in London, M. John Harrison was awarded the 2026 Booker Prize for his novel, The End of Everything. “It’s a book that turns you upside down, raises a wry smile—and…
Fiction
Lit Hub Weekly: November 2 – 6, 2026
A Working Mother, Agnes Owens’s novel of the Scottish working class• Great children’s bookscoming in November • This month’sbest new poetry collections• Spirits and ghostsin African…
Lists & Guides
What Should You Read Next? Here Are the Best Reviewed Books of the Week
Judi Dench’sIs It Too Late to Make a Run for It?, Ian Rankin’sThe Heights, Louise Kennedy’sStations, and Simon Garfield’sThe Pen: A Human Historyall feature among the best reviewed…
Writing & Publishing
Priyanka Kumar on Incorporating Art Into Her Nature Writing
On a snowy winter afternoon, a coyote was slipping out of the microwild around my home as I tried, without success, to get a good photograph. (I created the concept of the microwild…
Poetry
”Arabic Music,” a Poem by Mahmoud Darwish
“If only men were stones.”If only I were a stone…
Interviews
How Neuroscience Can Give Paralyzed People The Chance to Speak Again
A young adult man with closely cropped dark brown hair sits in a wheelchair in a dimly lit room, facing a computer screen on which a simple phrase is typed out: “How are you today?”…
Fiction
Who Gets to Write About Ordinary Life?
We keep asking Sergey Davydov for a news report, but what he really wants to tell us is a love story. It would be to our advantage if we do it his way. His sophomore foray outside of…
Fiction
Science Friction: An Argument for More Sex in Sci-Fi
For centuries, sailors enduring months-long voyages would gaze out at sea mammals sunning themselves and think the thought as old as thought itself:“Would.”Even famously reliable…
Fiction
Lit Hub Daily: November 6, 2026
TODAY: In 1884, Williams Wells Brown dies. Katherine Kelaidis on Sergey Davydov andwhy stories of ordinary life are essential in times of political upheaval: “Hatred and division, the…
Lists & Guides
Take the n+1 bookmatch quiz and know thyself
Our friends atn+1are back with their annual pre-yuletide gift. Bookmatch, the highly bespoke literary quiz, pairs readers with a custom-made syllabus based on their answers to a dozen…
Poetry
The Queens Public Library system is being held for ransom
In a bizarre turn of events, on Wednesday November 4th, New York City’s Queens Public Library (QPL) system, which operates 66 branches, experienced an attack on its online networks by…
Fiction
The Independent Press Top 40 Bestsellers: Nonfiction
Here are this week’sIndependent Press Top 40 Bestsellersfor fiction, based on sales in hundreds of independent bookstores nationwide, generously provided by the American Booksellers…
Writing & Publishing
Remember the Bees
The grandfather looks out at the sky and the bright red earth. He instinctively raises the back of his hand to his brow to wipe away a few beads of sweat. The heat, which came early…
Writing & Publishing
Am I the Asshole For Quitting My Book Club Because They Read Too Many Genre Books?
Welcome back to the most fascinating corner of the internet. That’s right, it’s time for another incredible installment of Am I the Literary Asshole, an advice column that asks you to…
Fiction
ZZ Packer and Nafkote Tamirat on France’s Ongoing Student Protests
The Parking Lot Attendant• Teret Teret(forthcoming)
Fiction
5 Book Reviews You Need to Read This Week
Our feast of fabulous reviews this week includes Dwight Garner on Annie ProulxStories, Clare Clark on Louise Kennedy’sStations, John Semly on William Gass’sThe Tunnel, Daniel Mason on…
Writing & Publishing
On Falling In and Out of Love With Dead Artists as an Art Historian
A few years ago, a student at the university where I’ve been teaching for the last decade asked me about my working process as an art historian. Without thinking too much about it, I…
Fiction
Inside Eudora Welty’s Home in Jackson, Mississippi
The following is from These Long Shadows: Women’s House Museums in the American Southby Monica Nelson.
Fiction
A Dystopia For Our Times: On Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta
Beneath the seventeenth-century Palace of Westminster there was a hidden Medieval undercroft, enduring like a line of erased poetry not fully obscured as new verse was written over it…
Poetry
Hanif Abdurraqib on the Lessons of June Jordan
Every year, starting in late August, I gather with a new group of high school writers from the Columbus City Schools district in my hometown of Columbus, Ohio. The group is small but…
Fiction
Lit Hub Daily: November 5, 2026
TODAY: In 1857, Ida Tarbell is born. Ed Simon explores the symbol of Guy Fawkes andV for Vendetta‘s anti-authoritarian afterlives. | Lit HubCriticismHanif Abdurraqib reflectson lessons…
Fiction
Here’s the winner of the 2026 American Library in Paris Book Award
Today, the American Library in Paris announced the winner of their2026 Book Award, which “celebrates works of literature, both fiction and nonfiction, that draw on France as a timeless…
Nonfiction
The Pioneering Journalist Who Met With Nazi War Criminals Ahead of Their Prosecution
Erika Mann drove through the night to meet the fifty-two most wanted men in the world. It was the middle of August 1945 and she was a few weeks shy of her fortieth birthday. Streaks of…
Poetry
Building a Community of Imposters: What It Means To Be a Literary Translator Today
Gracias for your recent note. It came, as you say, “out of the blue,” an expression that, in and of itself, defies translation. In my native Spanish, one would say “de la nada,” not…
Fiction
Please Don’t Put in the Novel That I Died: Olivia Manning’s (Lightly) Fictionalized Novels
“I don’t want fame when I am dead,” Olivia Manning once complained. “I want it now.” Manning, the British novelist who died in 1980, carried grudges: never made the Booker shortlist…
Fiction
Ry Herman on Finding Inspiration in Queer Fairytales
In the summer of 2024, I went looking for fairy tales that had LGBTQ+ subtext. In a time of renewed attack on queer identities, there’s something I find reassuring in the evidence that…
Writing & Publishing
On Self-Doubt, Self-Worth, and How to Manage Your Self-Esteem as a Writer
The journey there was inauspicious. In the basement of Port Authority I was told that the bus route I was holding a paper ticket for had been permanently canceled, so I had to race…
Fiction
The Olfactory History of Book Collecting
In 1345 the English book lover Richard de Bury described the libraries and booksellers of Paris, medieval Europe’s great center of learning “as more aromatic than stores of spicery.”…
Writing & Publishing
A Syllabus for Attention: Megan Mayhew on John Elder’s Reading Life
Twenty years ago, when I first came to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in Vermont, we let our cell phones die. There was no signal. We were moving off-radar.
Fiction
Lit Hub Daily: November 4, 2026
TODAY: In 1899, Freud’sThe Interpretation of Dreamsis published. Whether it’s new book smell or old book smell, the history of book collecting is aromatic. | Lit HubHistoryMegan Mayhew…
Writing & Publishing
How did libraries do at the polls last night? (Spoiler alert: Big wins in the stacks!)
In addition to a Blue Wave, last night’s midterm may have also brought aBookWave. In local and state elections all over the country, there was good news for libraries.
Fiction
China Miéville has won the 2026 Goldsmiths Prize
China Miéville has won this year’sGoldsmiths Prizefor his novel The Rouse.
Fiction
Louise Kennedy, Tom Drury, Elizabeth McCracken, and more: 20 new books out today!
We welcome November with a wonderful crop of literary works: Louise Kennedy, Tom Drury, Elizabeth McCracken, Michelle Porter, and more, all contribute to our stunning pile of newly…
Writing & Publishing
“Hyena Boys”
The hyena boys came to Bonaventure, which was serendipitous, because he was used to avoiding the world before the world spurned him. For one, his white albino skin flecked with dark…
Fiction
How Derek Walcott’s Postcolonial Epic Helped Me Write My Novel
It’s hard to understate the importance of the classical tradition to postcolonial literature. The Puerto Rican playwright Luis Rafael Sánchez recast Sophocles’AntigoneinLa pasión según…
Fiction
Mary Beth Keane on Writing a Novel of the Irish Diaspora
I’ve always found reading about Ireland compelling, having family lineage that includes a paternal great great grandmother who immigrated from County Cork to Galveston in the…
Interviews
On the Film NAZA and the Ethics of Documentary Art
WhenNAZA‘schilling final frame turned black and the sound of moviegoers crying became audible, I experienced something I have never experienced in a movie theater in my life.
Poetry
“Mirror,” a Poem by Jana Prikryl
I dreamt they took my shoulder, the left onebut my arm was still attached, the joina thing I was unable
Writing & Publishing
How J.R.R. Tolkien’s Strong Catholic Faith Influenced His Writing
To ask what Tolkien thought of God is rather like asking what Marx thought of socialism or how Samuel Pepys regarded the business of diary-keeping. In each case the subject so…
Writing & Publishing
What Fly Fishing Taught Me About Writing Fiction
Rugged men wading in pristine streams. River cowboys effortlessly lassoing beautiful brown and rainbow trout. Sun-sparkled rivers chiseling valleys into mountain ranges. This is…
Fiction
Lit Hub Daily: November 3, 2026
TODAY: In 1871, Walt Whitman declines Anne Gilchrist’s offer of marriage. How J.R.R. Tolkien’s Catholicism impacted his writing: “Tolkien, it is fair to say, saw God everywhere…above…
Writing & Publishing
Natasha Trethewey on the essential teachings of John Edgar Wideman
The following is an edited transcript of Natasha Trethewey’s remarks at the second annual Harper’s Magazine Awards Ceremony, where John Edgar Wideman was honored with the Lewis H…
Fiction
The Shared Life of Egan and Lucian
To ride across the bay at this hour is to see Shep’s Island at its most beautiful. The light of the setting sun sends sparks off the water in every direction. On this particular night…
Fiction
This Week in Literary History: Sinclair Lewis Wins the Nobel Prize in Literature
On November 5, 1930, Sinclair Lewis was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature “for his vigorous and graphic art of description and for his ability to create, with wit and humor, new…
Fiction
Tough Days and Good Laughs: 10 New Children’s Books Out This November
When my kids are having a tough day, I want nothing more than to offer them a hug and a sympathetic ear—but sometimes, comfort from a well-meaning mom is the last thingtheywant. They’d…
Fiction
The Ghostly and the Real: On Spirit Worlds in African Literature
Across many African literary traditions, the boundaries between the living and the dead, the seen and the unseen, are fluid rather than fixed. Ancestors, spirits, dreams, and myth are…
Lists & Guides
Vampiric Broodmothers, Gig-Economy Ghosts, and Medieval Abortionists: November’s Best Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books
Where I live is currently enjoying gorgeous fall foliage, so in a leaf-peeping season frame of mind, I bring you this latest batch of books: colorful, expansive, and falling at your…
Poetry
Glass Skulls, Luminosity, Soup, and Other Miracles: New Poetry to Read This November
“Movement against loss. Summer has its autumnal thoughts. / Bets made with your own body.” So begins Malgorzata Lebda’s poem “Trigger Points” in Mira Rosenthal’s translation of Mer de…
Fiction
10 Great Nonfiction Titles to Read in November
This month offers a plethora of excellent new nonfiction, including work by Hermione Lee, Orlando Swain, Sarah Haas, and more.
Fiction
Megan Nolan on Agnes Owens’s A Working Mother, an Ode to Working Class Scotland
When my first book was published, a journalist interviewing me expressed breathless surprise that I didn’t have a college degree. It would be difficult to overstate, he later wrote in…
Fiction
Lit Hub Daily: November 2, 2026
TODAY: In 1890, Moa Martinson is born. HowA Working Mother, Agnes Owens’s novel of the Scottish working class, reveals “the surrealness of everyday life.”| Lit HubCriticismCaroline…
Fiction
Lit Hub Weekly: October 26 – 30, 2026
Why boys actually needboy bands• Matthew Sitman talks to Brandon Taylor about Minor Black Figures• Maria Edgeworth, economist? • Anika Fajardo connects with her Colombian…
Fiction
October’s Best Reviewed Fiction
Barbara Kingsolver’sPartita, Yiyun Li’sMusic Against the Night, and Bonnie Garmus’sPeck & Peckall feature among the best reviewed fiction titles of the month.
Fiction
From Shakespeare to Tigers, 17 books out in paperback this November
It’s November, and this year that means a madcap month: America’s existential midterms; a potentially even more charged Thanksgiving than usual depending on what happens in said…
Writing & Publishing
How Is Writing Like Nursing?
My writing career began unexpectedly, with a terrible and surprising patient death. I had been a nurse for only a few months, and nothing in school had prepared me for what happened: a…
Fiction
The Literary Film & TV You Need to Stream in November
Every month, all the major streaming services add a host of newly acquired (or just plain new) shows, movies, and documentaries into their ever-rotating libraries. So what’s a…
Lists & Guides
The 10 Best Book Covers of October
Another month of books, another month of book covers. What my favorites from October lack in spookiness, they make up for in clever color stories, delicious textures, and a little bit…
Fiction
Artificial Intelligence is a Horror Story
Imagine your body—flesh and blood, muscle and bone—cast aside as mere refuse, and your brain “immersed in a liquid of the nature of cerebro-spinal fluid” inside a cylinder. Thus goes…
Poetry
No One Really Drives Away from Anything in Horror Films
Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road, Healthy, free, the world before me, The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.
Fiction
An Interrogation of Reality: On the Legacy of Blade Runner
There are films that you seem to live inside. Ninety minutes and change of what transpires on the screen singes your mind’s eye and once it happens, it stays. When the lights switch on…
Writing & Publishing
If Salvador Dalí Died in 1989, Then Why Can He Still Take a Selfie With You?
When you walk into the Salvador Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, Dalí himself will greet you. He appears on a life-sized screen, mustache waxed, and talks about his life and his…
Fiction
Lit Hub Daily: October 30, 2026
TODAY: In 1811, Jane Austen’sSense and Sensibilityis published. How AI is dragging us towards a futurethat rips the body out of body horror. | Lit HubTechnologyOctober’s best book…
Writing & Publishing
Andreas Malm has been barred from entering the UK over his solidarity with Palestine
Author Andreas Malm has been denied entry to the United Kingdom on the grounds that his “presence in the UK is not considered to be conducive to the public good,” according to The…
Fiction
Why is serial fiction having a moment?
In 1836, Charles Dickens hooked the good people of England on a story about a traveling men’s group. Published over two years in 19 installments, The Pickwick Papers launched a craze…
Timeline