- “The human brain would never be the same again—and in large part thanks to this new ability to record and pass on knowledge.” What The Epic of Gilgamesh reveals about economic, intellectual and creative development in ancient Sumer. | Lit Hub History
- Do animals deserve political rights and representation? Brandon Keim considers the human case for giving a voice to the voiceless. | Lit Hub Politics
- “The book opens with Lauren’s diary entry dated Saturday, the 20th of July 2024.” Roz Dineen on Parable of the Sower, the book everyone should read now. | Lit Hub Criticism
- Mira Ptacin on transforming one’s inner critic: “Each time the harsh voice emerges and I become aware of it, I put on my heart-shaped, rose-colored glasses.” | Lit Hub Craft
- “Hatred with heritage”: Richard Slotkin on the clash of American mythologies. | The Yale Review
- Emily Van Duyne talks knowledge production and outing yourself as a Sylvia Plath reader. | Chicago Review of Books
- Liza Donnelly on The New Yorker’s women cartoonists. | Print Mag
- “The closing of an American mind”: David B. Hobbs revisits E.E. Cummings’ The Enormous Room. | The Nation
- The literary scene is thriving in Ukraine, despite the destruction of one of the country’s largest book-printing plants by Russian missiles in May. | NPR
- More humility, fewer cutesy names: Rajiv Mohabir offers some advice for writing about whales. | Orion
- Murat Özyaşar on why he doesn’t write in his native language and speaking a “split tongue.” | Words Without Borders
- “Speculative fiction has historically framed colonization as a contest with winners and losers, but it’s never been that simple.” NK Jemisin on the power of stories to deconstruct colonial power. | Esquire
- Kate Wolf revisits Robert Plunket’s Love Junkie: “Indeed, one point of a character like Mimi is to give voice to the implicit biases underlying societal divisions of sexual orientation, class, and race.” | The Nation
- Robert Ito explores the collapse of the Romance Writers of America. | The New York Times
- A lot of books are poisonous. Like, a lot of them. | The Washington Post
- “Doing away with our library would be an injustice to our students… Let’s not give up on reading yet.” High school student Jeannine Chiang on the disappointing rebrand of her school’s library. | The Nation
- “There is a story we tell ourselves about beauty—that it is worth the pain. But true, abidingly resplendent beauty lies in the fact that, despite such harms, in the face of them, even against them, we continue to seek a better world.” Manjula Martin on Olivia Liang and the radical potential of gardening. | Los Angeles Review of Books
- Christopher Benfey considers the parallels between Moby-Dick and “a dark time…like our own.” | New York Review of Books
- On the life-changing power of memorizing a poem. | The Washington Post
Also on Lit Hub:
The cofounder of Guernica on the retraction of the Israel-Gaza essay • On the myth of American “heroification and Lies My Teacher Told Me • The deadly manifestations of religious hatred in India • Why we should pay more attention to plants • Shalom Auslander on the first story he ever learned • Jane Ciabattari talks to Lev Grossman • The impact of systematic oppression on Indigenous cuisine • How understanding her neurodiverse character helped Mathangi Subramanian understand herself • Books on the literary relationship between travel and madness • Am I the literary asshole if I’m jealous of my friend’s success as a writer? • Jean Marc Ah-Sen recommends fiction about very bad mentors • What Karla Cornejo Villavicencio is reading now and next • The mysterious power of poetry • The racism of the New York Times’ “Best Books of the Century” list • Lauren Markham on why she almost quit journalism • Phil Christman considers the poetics of place • Justin Muchnick on his favorite novel of the Olympics • In praise of literary chaos
