Lit Hub Daily: May 7, 2025
THE BEST OF THE LITERARY INTERNET
TODAY: In 1895, the first book edition of H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine is published by Henry Holt & Co.
- “The deeper problem isn’t just about fees. It’s about the identity of the literary world.” Benjamin Davis investigates the rise of the submission industrial complex. | Lit Hub Craft
- Eunji Kim explains why your parents might have been right about reality TV rotting your brain. | Lit Hub TV
- Padraic X. Scanlan on Jonathan Swift, dispossession, and how British imperialism caused famine in Ireland. | Lit Hub History
- “An exile of its first garden, the orange moves where the world takes it, always a stranger who must assimilate to a new home.” Katie Goh meditates on the personal mythology of an iconic citrus fruit. | Lit Hub Nature
- Rosa Castellano on decentering whiteness in literary spaces: “It is the discomfort of asking and of making space for the answers…that will allow us to stay in the room together.” | Lit Hub Criticism
- Randee Dawn explores the allure (and dilemma) of trunk literature: “Here’s the truth: Most authors do not publish their first novel.” | Lit Hub Craft
- What’s a psoas? Henry Abbott wants you to know that it’s one of the most important muscles in your body. | Lit Hub Health
- Philip Hoare on Paul Nash, W. Graham Robertson, and how William Blake influenced Oscar Wilde’s circle. | Lit Hub Criticism
- “Arin was somewhere in Germany when my mother got sick again.” Read from Jemimah Wei’s new novel, The Original Daughter. | Lit Hub Fiction
- Gabriel Mckee considers Mothman, UFOs, and Gray Barker’s bizarre and fascinating writing. | The MIT Press Reader
- “It was like spending four days in an immersive theatrical production, every person who made the pilgrimage to Walsingham an actor in the proceedings.” Lamorna Ash on partying with nuns over Easter. | The Dial
- Hari Kunzru on wellness grifters, New Age conspiracies, and “do your own research” in times of fascism. | New York Review of Books
- The anonymous user behind @poetryisnotaluxry on Instagram discusses poetry as an outlet for privacy, editing an anthology, and the Audre Lorde essay that inspired their handle. | The Nation
- Daniel Felsenthal explores the “revelatory forthrightness” of Dario Bellezza’s unabashedly queer poetry. | Poetry
- “The dream of a relationship unencumbered by reality is a dream of a poem unencumbered by prose.” Andrea Long Chu on Ocean Vuong. | Vulture
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