Lit Hub Daily: May 19, 2025
THE BEST OF THE LITERARY INTERNET
TODAY: In 1925, Malcolm X is born.
- Inside the “new kind of distinctly Black creative self-making” born from the editorial relationship between Toni Morrison and Muhammad Ali. | Lit Hub Biography
- “The book really did start because I was obsessed with her, and I was telling her about it, and she was like, ‘Why don’t you go write about it?’” Adelaide Faith on turning an obsession with her therapist into a novel. | Lit Hub In Conversation
- “There is no higher praise for a work of factual writing than to say that it reads like a John McPhee book.” Peter Hessler on a beloved mentor and tireless proponent of creative nonfiction. | Lit Hub Biography
- Bryan VanDyke on inspiration versus plagiarism, Ursula Le Guin, and learning to love literary influences. | Lit Hub Criticism
- Mariam Itani on Beirut, home, and the paradox of living in Jordan, from the latest issue of The Common. | Lit Hub Memoir
- Lorna Graham recommends novels on the workplace by Chandler Baker, Bonnie Garmus, Calvin Kasulke, and more. | Lit Hub Reading Lists
- Did Miguel de Cervantes’ illegitimate daughter Isabel de Saavedra’s influence the way he portrayed women in the “Quixote”? | Lit Hub Criticism
- “Every morning since he left, the cold has awakened him just before dawn. He is shivering.” Read from Mathias Énard’s novel The Deserters, translated by Charlotte Mandell. | Lit Hub Fiction
- Columbia student Mohsen Mahdawi on ICE, activism, and Palestine after being released from detainment. | Democracy Now!
- It’s been five years since the Harper’s cancel culture letter. David Klion wants to know: Why are so many of its signers quiet in the face of Trump’s assaults on free speech? | The Nation
- Dafna Izenberg examines the relationship between Mavis Gallant’s fiction and journalism. | The Walrus
- Hanif Abdurraqib writes in defense of despair. | The New Yorker
- Kwame Anthony Appiah weighs in on the ethics of buying used books (and music). | The New York Times Magazine
- “The NEA has always been threatened.” Adam Morgan on how the loss of NEA grants impacts small publishers and literary magazines. | Los Angeles Review of Books
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