Carrie R. Moore has won the 2026 Young Lions Fiction Award. — Last night, in a ceremony, the New York Public Library announced the winner of its Young Lions Fiction Award, which celebrates fiction by writers 35 and younger. This year’s winner is Carrie …
The End of an Era - Hugh Howey — We knew this day would come. Some of us have known for decades, have been writing and pontificating about this since Ken Jennings lost at Jeopardy and Kasparov lost at chess. The writing was on the wall, and now the writing is everywhere.…
Where Does the Will To Live Come From… in Humans and Nonhumans Alike? — The English word “agency” comes from the Latin agere, meaning “to do” or “to drive,” and goes back to the Proto-Indo-European root *ag-, meaning “to lead o…
Why Do We Keep Murdering Our Darlings? — Why is everyone killing off their main characters? In the academic year 2021-2022 at the liberal arts college where I teach, I was startled by the trend. A plot contagion. Nothing is off limits, I …
Here’s the shortlist for the 2026 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction. — The Ursula K. Le Guin Foundation has announced the shortlist for the Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction, which annually awards $25,000 to the author of a book who best represents the legendary wri…
Why Personalities Don't Have Genders | Hanaeri Kim | TEDxPOWIIS Youth — Through her personal encounters, Hanaeri challenged gender stereotypes and discussed how shoe-horning genders into specific behavioural and societal expectations may adversely impact people. She discusses…
On Waking Up As an American During the Fall of the Soviet Union — On the evening of August 18, 1991, my friend Terry and I were staying at the Pribaltiyskaya Intourist hotel, a huge Soviet hotel complex built in an ugly brutalist style on a windswept island close…
Technophilia, AI, and space elevators: A love letter to the future | Jared Ficklin | TEDxKC — In this wildly original, funny talk, Jared Ficklin uses AI-generated Burning Man photos, a cosmic origin story, and a case for space elevators to make the argument for "technophilia" —…
Anaïs Nin on Why Emotional Excess is Essential to Creativity — “Something is always born of excess: great art was born of great terrors, great loneliness, great inhibitions, instabilities, and it always balances them.”
Marjane Satrapi, author of Persepolis, has died at 58. — Marjane Satrapi, the author, artist, filmmaker, and activist behind the best-selling Persepolis series, has died at the age of 58. A leader in both France and Iran, Satrapi lived and wrote at a cul…
How to build a campaign people believe in | Máirtín Mac Gabhann | TEDxBlack Mountain — How to Build a Campaign People Believe In In this TEDx talk, Máirtín Mac Gabhann shares the story behind Donate4Dáithí and the campaign that helped change organ donation law in Northern…
July’s Best Reviewed Fiction — Colson Whitehead’s Cool Machine, Sigrid Nunez’s It Will Come Back to You, and Valeria Luiselli’s Beginning Middle End all feature among the best reviewed fiction titles of the month. Brought …
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…
Jim Jones and Me: On Growing Up Guyanese-American in the Shadow of Jonestown — On July 3rd, The New York Times published an article titled “The Site of the Jonestown Massacre Opens to Tourists. Some Ask Why.” In it, Genevieve Glatsky reports on the mixed reception the tour re…
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Rhythm, Melody and Mind | Akshay Chawda | TEDxIITGandhinagar — What if a single sound could slow your thoughts and make you feel completely present? In this immersive and soulful talk-performance, handpan artist Akshay Chawda explores the emotional power of music, rhythm, and…
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…
Did You Know FDR Was Present For the Most Famous At-Bat in Baseball History? — Franklin Roosevelt and Anton Cermak had achieved a certain fusion in the public imagination four and a half months earlier, on October 1, 1932, when they sat together in a box at Wrigley Field, whe…
Jamaica Kincaid! Eimear McBride! 19 books out in paperback this August. — August, amazingly, approaches, the final month in a summer that has at once felt slow and like it has slipped by with the curious swiftness of a half-remembered dream. Still, the summer is not over…
20 Ways of Surfacing from the Blues: Sydney Smith’s 200-year-old Strategies for Raising Low Spirits in a Letter of Advice to a 13-year-old Girl — Elizabeth Bishop’s memorial service opened with a reflection by her partner Alice — whose near-loss inspired one of the greatest…
Why Writing Feels So Hard (and How to Make it Easier) — Let’s be honest about something: the fact that writing is hard has nothing to do with how talented you are, how many ideas you have, or how much you want to have finished your novel. Writing …
Nigel Farage resigns as MP, will run in UK by-election — Reform UK leader Nigel Farage says he will resign as an MP to trigger a by-election and stand again.
Here’s the Frederick Douglass Speech to Revisit This July 4th — Frederick Douglass’ great lecture “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?,” delivered on July 5th, 1852, to a predominantly white audience at Rochester’s Corinthian Hall, captured the contradicti…
Today is Tom Stoppard Day in the UK — Today in London a who’s who of the literary world will be observing what may be the inaugural memorial day for the late playwright Tom Stoppard. Celebrations center around the renaming of the Duke …
Would You Chat With an A.I. 'Ghost' of a Deceased Loved One? New Research Suggests That the Tech Can Provide Comfort and Closure — Commercial "griefbots" are becoming more popular, and many experts have questions about their psychological and ethical impacts. A new study aims…
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…
Can ChatGPT Produce a Version of Proust Worth Reading? — “The part of ourselves that matters, when it matters, is outside time… Think of yourself simply as an instrument capable of whatever experiments in beauty or truth you wish to perform, and yo…
Happiness | Ellie (Jiyul) Lee | TEDxIGBIS Youth — Happiness is not a finish line you cross after enough achievements, and Ellie has a different way of thinking about it entirely. Using the metaphor of Lego blocks, each representing something different like purpose, rest, friendsh
Who Were the Mayflower Puritans? (And Did You Know They Came From a Town Called “Scrooby”?) — The Mayflower Pilgrims believed that they were freedom seekers, escaping centuries of bondage. William Bradford, a Mayflower passenger who served as Plymouth’s longtime governor, began h
Jenny Jackson on the Literary Potential of Gossip — This first appeared in Lit Hub’s Craft of Writing newsletter—sign up here. I am an unapologetic collector of gossip. Bring me your tales of accidental reply-all, familial faux-pas, sartorial misadv…
L'architettura dell'attesa | Mattia Pagnini | TEDxLiceo Marconi Pesaro Youth — Perché un accordo sospeso ci mette in tensione? Perché una melodia che conosciamo ci dà piacere? E perché una nota “sbagliata” può catturare immediatamente la nostra attenzione? Attraverso musica,…
Music Has No Boundaries | Advaita Vinith | TEDxBritish School Muscat Youth — Exploring how music can bring people together, even when they come from different cultures or backgrounds. It shows how music can connect us, tell stories, and express feelings without needing words.…
Nate Bukaty on World Cup 2026 and the Heart of American Soccer — MLS commentator Nate Bukaty joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to talk about Kansas City’s influence on American soccer and how the city came to host the World Cup. Bukaty, the …
Sabalenka bids to rediscover form at intriguing US Open — Will Aryna Sabalenka rediscover her mojo? How will Carlos Alcaraz's comeback go? And can Novak Djokovic win? It's time for the 2026 US Open singles.
In France, Brutal Summer Heat Waves Are Taking a Toll on the Flowers That Inspired Claude Monet's Most Beloved Paintings — The colorful nasturtiums at the artist's house and gardens have been hit particularly hard this summer, as France grapples with a record 52 heatwave days
Why You Should Go To Theme Parks | Marcus Cerullo | TEDxRoyal Tunbridge Wells Youth — In May 2026, after months of preparation, students from across Tunbridge Wells delivered their very own TEDx talk. With support from teachers, each student researched, scripted, rehearsed and…
Trump targets birthright citizenship again — US President Donald Trump has signed two new executive orders targeting birthright citizenship.
What Do Arthurian Legend and All My Children Have in Common? — Down the street, my coffee shop’s windows glowed with the baleful warmth of an Edward Hopper painting. This was where I liked the write—a third place, before dawn, when the city was quiet and my th…
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Lit Hub Daily: July 28, 2026 — 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,…
Lit Hub Daily: June 18, 2026 — Through layers of loss and sorrow, Fatemeh Shams remembers Marjane Satrapi: “Marjane reminded me, as her work often does, that in the bleakest times, art, writing, and human connection are ra…
🎶 He doesn't like pretty much anything 🎶 — Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.
Is Moby-Dick the Greatest American Novel? — Near the beginning of his long narrative poem “Letter to Lord Byron,” W. H. Auden writes, “I want a form that’s large enough to swim in.” So too, apparently, did Herman Melv…
“July Sun” — Ghulam Ali pushed his way through the sugar-cane. It was quiet and still except for the anxious scuttling of insects around his feet. He squatted down, and the stems closed in around him when he un…
What a Rug Can Teach us About Being Human | Kyle Khandikian | TEDxAUA — NOTE FROM TED: TEDx events are independently organized by volunteers. The guidelines we give TEDx organizers are described in more detail here:…
Lit Hub Daily: August 12, 2026 — When a wealthy university donor can silence one of the world’s leading genocide scholars, it exposes the problem with for-profit higher education. | Lit Hub Politics The best way to get peopl…
On the Speed of Animals, Airborne and Earthbound — Animals move in all manner of ways, not all of which fit in the three big categories of mobility: running, flying, swimming. Some organisms are subjected to passive locomotion, carried by water or…
this library catalog lets you search by the exact feeling a book gave you instead of title or author and honestly it's kind of genius 📚
Your Brain on Grief, Your Heart on Healing — “Grief is a heart-wrenchingly painful problem for the brain to solve… to live in the world with the absence of someone… ingrained in your understanding of the world… For the brain, [they are]…
Kurt Vonnegut’s Life-Advice to His Children — Educate yourself, welcome life’s messiness, read Chekhov, avoid becoming an architect at all costs.
When George Sand Hit the Town in Men’s Clothes — You’d be hard put to call it a feminist image exactly. In this illustration for a gossip column printed sometime in 1831-2, the writer George Sand is on the protective, even chivalrous arm of a man…
Destroyer, Stephin Merritt to Headline Bazooka! Fest — Times New Viking, Joanna Sternberg, Sad13, and Asher White round up the lineup
The Helter-Skelter History of the Manson Murders — “Now is the time for Helter Skelter,” Charles Manson is said to have said, and then the family went out and committed two nights of violence that meant to “shock the world” and “instill fear into t…
Namwali Serpell and Angela Flournoy on Toni Morrison’s Tar Baby — Continuing on tour for On Morrison, Namwali Serpell travels to Philadelphia to talk with writer Angela Flournoy about a scene from Tar Baby. Speaking at the Free Library, they trace the novel’…
Lit Hub Weekly: June 29 – July 3, 2026 — Get ready for part two! These are the 258 books we’re most anticipating in the second half of 2026. | Lit Hub Reading Lists Did you know that Ancient Roman romance novels went hard? | Lit Hub Histo…
W. H. Auden’s 1954 review of The Fellowship of the Ring. — Seventy-two years ago this week, the godfather of high fantasy, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, published the first novel in a proposed three-volume epic “largely concerned with hobbits.” Th…
The Internet Archive is quietly digitizing every library card catalog ever made... and you can search them all in one place. Weird rabbit hole if you like old classification systems.
Fed’s Warsh: Full Speech at Jackson Hole Symposium — Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh said inflation isn’t meaningfully slowing and warned that policymakers must be confident that it is, otherwise the central bank has “work to do.” He reiterated that policymakers will…
Tokyo's Sushi Bus combines conveyor belt dining with open-air sightseeing — Tokyo's Sushi Bus combines conveyor belt dining with open-air sightseeing.
The Meaning of Maturity: Ursula K. Le Guin on What It Really Takes to Grow Up — It is not merely a matter of growing bones and growing responsibilities, this business of growing up, this unfinishable project of becoming ourselves. It is less like the evolutionary diagram of th…