Is This the Strangest Soccer Novel Ever Written? — This piece was published in collaboration with Golden Goal, a literary magazine about the intersection of politics, culture and sport at the 2026 World Cup. To read more, visit their website: golde…
How to Be a Tree: Notes on the Resilience of Letting Go — This essay and poem are part of the Universe in Verse book. Trees grant us some of the richest metaphors for our own lives — a polished lens on the quality of attention we pay the world. “The…
Are Elder Millennial Women in America Ok? A Historical Accounting — To be human is to go through multiple cycles of belief and cynicism throughout your lifetime. To quote the canonic meme guy sitting at a table, debate me. But I think that people my age have grown …
The Private Capture of Public Genius — Essay I of Upstream of Everything
What Is the Difference Between Exile and Exiles? — Close to forty years ago, Derek Walcott wrote something scathing about V.S. Naipaul. The two writers—both from the Caribbean, both Nobel laureates—were still alive then. Walcott wrote the following…
Paradise Pawn — When Dad and I went to Dallas for Mom’s funeral, Dad gave me my own disposable camera with twenty four pictures on it. I used up two taking pictures out the window of the plane. I remember thinking…
Three in hospital after fire and crush at festival in London — Ghana Party in the Park organisers called the day "difficult" and "deeply upsetting".
The Department of Labored Content — Trump’s Cabinet has joined TikTok, but the White House is about to learn that controlling the platform isn’t the same as being good at it.
Jenny Jackson, Teddy Wayne, Paul Tremblay, and more: 16 new books out today! — As we go easing into the holiday weekend, there’s a smaller batch of releases: though the ones that are here, are ones that count. Jenny Jackson’s next hotly anticipated novel, The Sham…
Human Routers of Machine Words — On people who use AI to think.
Nobody’s a Stranger When You Play “No Letting Go” — To a young d.j. in 2003, Wayne Wonder’s dancehall anthem seemed like a beacon from a better world.
See David Hockney’s odd and lovely illustrations for his favorite Brothers Grimm fairy tales. — The beloved British artist David Hockney, who died last week at the age of 88, is celebrated for his vibrant paintings, his innovative techniques, and his joyful kookiness. He also, li
What to read next based on your favorite A24 movie. — Have you heard? A24 is taking over Hollywood. Possibly the world. The indie company that initially marketed itself as the edgy underdog has become a pillar/last bastion of extra-Marvel movies. No l…
The Art of Losing and the Art of Beckoning Love Back: The Story Behind One of the Greatest Poems Ever Written — You wouldn’t have bet on it, the frail famous poet teaching at Harvard as a visiting professor and the athletic secretary of the campus residence half her age. But…
I Thought I Had Nothing to Write About. Then I Got a Dog. — A contract accepted under duress is typically considered voidable. My wife Helen is a lawyer, so she would understand this better than anyone, and yet when she convinced me to say yes to a puppy af…
This Week in Literary History: Washington Irving’s “Rip Van Winkle” is Published — This first appeared in Lit Hub’s Literary History newsletter—sign up here. In the early 1800s, when people named their cliques, Washington Irving was “sort of a ringleader” of a group of men in…
The fall of the theorem economy — How AI could destroy mathematics and barely touch it
Why We Need More Woman-Centric Retellings of The Odyssey — During a pivotal moment in The Odyssey, Circe sends Odysseus to the Kingdom of the Dead to find the soothsayer who can instruct him on how to return home after more than a dozen years away. But to …
FDA to Review Easing Restrictions on Peptides — This summer the FDA will consider loosening restrictions on certain peptide injections, with encouragement from RFK Jr. and the Trump administration. Bloomberg Businessweek senior reporter Amanda Mull explains to hosts David Gura…
In Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility You Can Be “Demure and Brat All at Once” — Thick into the edits to my time-travel-rom-com novel set in the Regency era about two sisters who couldn’t be more different (one loves Jane Austen, one loves Skims), my gentle editor suggested I r…
Leonard Cohen on the Antidote to Anger and the Meaning of Resistance — One of the commonest and most corrosive human reflexes is to react to helplessness with anger. We do it in our personal lives and we do it in our political lives. We are living through a time of un…
Follow Awe: Deb Olin Unferth on Writing Speculative Fiction — This first appeared in Lit Hub’s Craft of Writing newsletter—sign up here. Most of my books have elements of surrealism or sci-fi or the fantastic—the passenger pigeons mysteriously return, or a ch…
How Christian Europe Learned to Fear the Forest—and the Beasts Within — Europe is not a continent of deserts, but in the early Middle Ages, Europeans began to assimilate biblical notions of the wilderness by applying the same philosophy to a regionally appropriate cont…
Route 66 in a New Yorker: Nine Days, Eight States, and Two Transmissions — When we learned about the trip that Markku Jaakkola and Jacob Gilbert had planned, we were envious. The two friends devised to set out from Detroit in a 1973 Chrysler New Yorker to drive the length of…
Redirecting... — Read books online free.
Watch the chic, menacing trailer for Bret Easton Ellis’s new FX series. — Oh, Bret Easton Ellis. You old lightning rod. The Gen X nihilist known for anchoring the literary Brat Pack and depicting depraved superficial youth is shifting his talents to television. With the …
Phishers are hijacking legitimate cloud infrastructure — We cover a cloud-based AitM attack scenario leveraging service workers and Ultraviolet, and provide detailed phishing hosting statistics across platforms like Cloudflare Workers, Vercel, Netlify, GitHub Pages, and IPFS.
The Wisdom of Water: Alan Watts on the Ocean and the Meaning of Life — Four billion years ago, in the hydrothermal vents at the bottom of the world where serpentine is forged, chemistry trembled with the promise of consciousness and matter began its long metabolic pil…
Daniel Mason, Rachel Aviv, Emeline Atwood and more: 21 new books out today! — It’s July, and it’s time to be absolutely inundated with summer novels. This week, we’re treated to the new book by North Woods author Daniel Mason, Country People, the hotly anti…
Chef Nephi Craig on the Power and Importance of Preserving Native Cuisines — The sun hung low in the sky as I turned on to the path leading from Whiskey Flats to the neighborhood we’d always called Nobody’s Home. It was barely eight o’clock, a frigid morning in February, an…
Lit Hub Daily: July 30, 2026 — 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…
Daily Cartoon: Thursday, June 18th — A drawing that riffs on the latest news and happenings.
Hipster Ipsum – Artisanal filler text for your project. — Artisanal placeholder text.
Five Anti-Colonial Travel Narratives You Should Read Before Your Next Trip — I am on a personal campaign to give the travel sphere something no one asked for but definitely—and desperately—needs, an Indigenous perspective. Whether European newcomers know it or not, tribal p…
On the First—and, So Far, Only—Book Ban Case Ever Heard by the Supreme Court — There had always been efforts to ban books, of course. And in the 1970s, those efforts exploded. In the early part of the decade, the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom …
Restaurant Review: Sanwits — Sanwits, in the old Rowdy Rooster flagship spot, serves a glorious mashup of American sandwich styles and frank Filipino flavors.
Hermann Hesse on How to Hear the Wisdom of the Inner Voice — “If you are now wondering where to look for consolation, where to seek a new and better God… he does not come to us from books, he lives within us… This God is in you too. He is m…
The Leader of NASA’s Artemis II Mission Is Still Moonstruck — The astronaut Reid Wiseman talks about going deeper into space than anyone in history, eating maple cookies in microgravity, and deciding how to spend his first day off after returning to Earth.
“wasps,” by Jan Wagner — “how starkly clear you hear them gnawing / at the wood of lawn chairs near the awning.”
Habits of the Sea — 1952 Clay Lockhart’s cries echoed for half a mile up the rain-drowned coastline, carried on the late January storm that tore across the Outer Hebrides—an isolated, windswept stretch of archipelagos…
What Happens When You Show Your Parents Your Debut Novel? — I gave my book to my partner before I gave it to my parents, figuring it was better to conquer one gut-churning fear at a time. I refused to watch him read it, but I was aware when he reached the s…
Lit Hub Daily: July 20, 2026 — “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…
Tolkien Reads from “The Hobbit” in Rare Archival Audio from His First Encounter with a Tape Recorder — “He was Gollum — as dark as darkness, except for two big round pale eyes.”
You could be missing out on £150 off your energy bill - here's how to check — Some people need to ensure they are named on their energy bill before the deadline to qualify for help.
How Medieval Doctors, Christian and Muslim, Treated the Black Death — Many physicians sought to treat patients struck down by the Black Death. These doctors typically turned to the extant body of medical knowledge, derived from the ancient world and Arabic texts writ…
The Race to Be the First Democratic Primary State — How the debate over the first-in-the-nation primary became a battle over the future of the Democratic Party.
The Time Johnny Cash Almost Started a Prison Riot at San Quentin — “I think this is a very important thing: to give a man some hope in prison, to give a man some encouragement to be a better citizen while he is there and if he is a better citizen, while he i…
The Longreads Questionnaire, Featuring Cory Doctorow - Longreads — The author of Enshittification and the new The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI on hammock life, the joy of pulp, and writing through it.
Six tactile homes characterised by stone — <p>Limestone cladding, sandstone bricks and precast stone blocks feature in this roundup of contemporary homes that demonstrate the versatility of both structural and decorative stone. Whitberry, UK, by Pend Blush-toned blocks of…
Where It's at:// — overreacted — From handles to hosting.
Paul Yoon, Meaghan Beatley, Claudia Rankine, and more: 22 new books out today! — The first week of August brings a windfall of heavyweight literature: a novel by Paul Yoon, a searing nonfiction book of essays by Meaghan Beatley, and a much anticipated work by Claudia Rankine. T…
Best projector deal: Save 20% on the Soundcore Nebula P1i Portable Projector — Spend the rest of summer hosting outdoor movie nights and cozy fall evenings inside with your favorite flicks.
Chantel Acevedo on Reimagining Her Father Through Fiction — When I consider my father, who disappeared almost entirely from my life in my infancy, I think of what I don’t know. I don’t remember his hands, or his voice, how he formed arguments, whether he wa…
The Beauty of a Stone Wall - Longreads — "Why we love them, and why I build them."
Lit Hub Daily: July 21, 2026 — 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 Fr…
Darwin’s Greatest Regret and His Deathbed Reflection on What Makes Life Worth Living — “If I had to live my life again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week.”
A Short Song for a Long and Precious Season — Jason Isbell’s “Something to Love” is the song of summers past and summers to come.
Liberia’s kush crisis: The hidden trade behind a generation at risk — As kush spreads across Liberia, families face the fallout while traffickers remain largely out of reach.
Iraola wants Mac Allister & Alisson to stay with Liverpool — Liverpool boss Andoni Iraola wants midfielder Alexis Mac Allister and goalkeeper Alisson to remain at the club.
Bonus-point rule and last-16 changes for Champions Cup — Try bonus points in next season's Champions Cup pool stage will be awarded only to teams who score at least three more times than their opponents.