Lit Hub Weekly: February 16 - 20, 2026
THE BEST OF THE LITERARY INTERNET
- Sergio Luzzatto on The Marquis de Morès, the father of European fascism: “Morès thus was the first to try to handle the peculiar mixture of racial hatred, alleged interclass solidarity, and organized paramilitary violence to which Benito Mussolini would give the name fascism.” | Lit Hub Biography
- Amara Lakhous on the necessity of combining fiction writing with fieldwork. | Lit Hub Craft
- Maris Kreizman wonders what you’re supposed to do when the biggest digital platforms for readers are all kind of evil. | Lit Hub Politics
- D.S. Waldman considers his own poetic voice alongside those of mentors and peers like Louise Glück and Garth Greenwell. | Lit Hub Criticism
- “Nobody could have convinced me that this was therapeutic, or anything but maybe the stupidest drug in existence.” Sheila Heti chronicles her experiences of psychedelic-assisted therapy. | Granta
- Allegra Goodman considers her mother’s style: “Great women didn’t need fairy tales or magic transformations. On the contrary, women like my mother fashioned themselves—and I could do that too.” | Vogue
- Annie Lloyd looks back on Halt and Catch Fire as a time capsule of techno-optimism. | Dirt
- Is the lengthy review having a comeback? Carolina Abbott Galvão considers a new generation of scrappy lit mags. | Columbia Journalism Review
- Nicholas Clairmont on the perils of optimization: “What you lose in optimizing morality is the same thing you lose in maximizing your airline-mile spend. In other words, nothing quantifiable—but precisely the chance to escape quantification.” | The Point
- Emily Zarevich revisits Who Shall Die?, Simone de Beauvoir’s only play. | JSTOR Daily
- Is a TV deal the novelist’s dream, or nightmare? Authors get real about the Hollywood IP machine. | Cultured
- Anna Juul reports on the end of mail in Denmark (tr. Caroline Waight): “These days it feels as though words are vanishing, as if they’re losing their value.” | The Dial
- Chris Molnar talks to New York punk icon Richard Hell about the reissue of his novel, Godlike: “I don’t even know if I should dignify it as a criticism, but people would treat it as if it wasn’t legitimately a novel because it was me, as if it was autofiction.” | Interview
- Sarah Jones considers the American right’s obsession with the apocalypse. | New York Magazine
- Daisy Alioto considers the appeal of corporate thrillers. | Dirt
- Emanuel Maiberg reports on the horrors of Alpha School, the “AI-powered private school” whose proponents think educational content is obsolete. | 404 Media
Also on Lit Hub:
This week in literary history, Malcolm X is assassinated • Kara Olson on the struggle to make meaning from chaos • Gabriela Spears-Rico on the all-too-familiar brutality of ICE • Starvation, displacement and genocide in Gaza • Sheila Heti on Torborg Nedreaas’s Nothing Grows by Moonlight • The Black music scene in Minneapolis that gave birth to Prince’s sound • Jane Ciabattari talks to Namwali Serpell about Toni Morrison • Lillian Li recommends books about friendship • Sahra Noor on the all-too-familiar feeling of men with guns in your neighborhood • Andrea Jenkins on the violent echoes of Reconstruction in the Twin Cities • Susan Raffo on holding space for humility in the midst of radical change • The myth of the red-lipped suffragette • On writing a middle grade book about religion • How media obscures the truth about crime and safety • Homo sapiens’ rise to the top of the animal kingdom • Why public health is a shared responsibility • The blind spots and biases of traditional travel narratives • The rebellion of dancing • Su Hwang on experiencing chaos at a distance • Ahmed Ismail shares an elegy for Renee Nicole Good • Michelle Zamanian on balancing chaos at home and strife in the streets of Iran • The unlikely process behind The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time • Martin Aitken’s TBR • What happens when your books don’t get banned • The closing of Chicago’s Volumes Bookcafe • 5 book reviews you need to read this week • Independent Press Top 40 Bestsellers in fiction and nonfiction • Class and land use in 19th-century Britain • Anne Fadiman’s TBR • Remembering the last day of Alex Pretti’s life • Zeke Caligiuri on coming home • On the long American tradition of occupation • Marian Hassan finds strength in memories of her father’s resistance • Visiting a destroyed university in Gaza • Toni Morrison’s uses of ambiguity • The best reviewed books of the week • Burnside Soleil on living with his characters • What could life on Mars do to the human body? • Read a poem by Sony Ton-Aime
