Lit Hub Daily: April 10, 2026
THE BEST OF THE LITERARY INTERNET
TODAY: In 1847, newspaper tycoon Joseph J. Pulitzer, namesake of the Pulitzer Prizes, is born.
- How a pulp magazine built American science fiction: “For better (and often worse), Amazing Stories set the template and idiom, language and look, of what people think science fiction is.” | Lit Hub Craft
- Daphne Du Meowier (yes, you read that right) introduces you to some of America’s best bookshop pets. | Lit Hub Bookstores
- Molly Crabapple considers history as a “necromantic art” and shares 10 tips for conjuring. | Lit Hub Craft
- Virginia McGee Richards on the enslaved men who dug South Carolina’s New Cut Canal. | Lit Hub History
- “Most of the joy I have known has been a kind of escape hatch from pain—a type of joy despite circumstances.” Kate Bowler examines the appeal of junk. | Lit Hub Memoir
- Ben Lerner’s Transcription, Patrick Radden Keefe’s London Falling, and Caro Claire Burke’s Yesteryear all feature among the best reviewed books of the week. | Book Marks
- “In a small city in Italy, a woman removes her shoes, / cups them to her chest, and tiptoes the cobblestone streets.” Read “Dispatch From a New York Times Article the Day Mary Oliver Died,” a poem by Megan Gannon from the collection Dispatch From Every Second Guess. | Lit Hub Poetry
- “You sit at the edge of the bed watching your husband who looks as if he were sleeping.” Read from Binnie Kirshenbaum’s novel, Counting Backwards. | Lit Hub Fiction
- “We must always be searching for new language and new words to help us articulate the scope and nuances of the problems we are most desperate to solve.” Camonghne Felix on the need for new language for this moment. | Harper’s Bazaar
- Nitsuh Abebe traces the evolution of “gatekeeping.” | The New York Times Magazine
- “If there remains a difference between literature and content, the influencer novel suggests how unstable that difference has become.” Charlie Tyson examines how influencers show up in literature. | The Baffler
- Sam Adams separates fact from urban legend in the case of video store staple, Faces of Death. | Slate
- Alex Gil on discovering a lost version of Aimé Césaire’s play, ……And the Dogs Were Silent: “Césaire transforms the historical revolution into a founding myth for Black freedom, at a time when there were still anticolonial battles to be fought…” | Public Books
- Helen DeWitt turned down the Windham-Campbell prize due to promotional requirements. | The Guardian
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