Lit Hub Weekly: March 2 - 6, 2026
THE BEST OF THE LITERARY INTERNET
- If you’re done with the “men don’t read” discourse, try reading about Kristopher Jansma’s all-male book club instead. | Lit Hub Craft
- On Ezra Pound, Mussolini’s biggest fan: “…Pound lauded Mussolini’s accomplishments—such as reducing crime and improving Italy’s road and railway networks—while also advocating that fascism was the only cure…” | Lit Hub Biography
- How a bill targeting trans literature could ban all LGBTQ+ books from American public schools (and why you should care). | Lit Hub Politics
- Marissa Levien makes a case against gamified reading. | Lit Hub Criticism
- “You watch what you wear, think twice about what you say, here as anywhere. This is how empires collapse.” Siddhartha Deb’s memoir of disenchantment, from Calcutta to Columbia. | Equator
- Joy Williams on the “fragile, ghost-haunted, unironic, unthrifty, reliant, romantic, intermittently animistic, and decidedly non-avant-garde” temperament of Rilke. | NYRB
- Grace Byron considers vaugeposting as an “antidote to oversharing.” | Dirt
- There’s who will win the Booker Prize and then there’s who should win the Booker Prize: Ryan Chapman weighs in with his annual deep-dive into the shortlist. | The Sewanee Review
- “The challenge is ultimately about resisting those authoritarians who, now empowered by the most advanced articulation of the Machine, aim to crush the merely human for the sake of absolute power and control.” Jay Tolson considers humanism in a post-humanist age. | The Hedgehog Review
- Margaret Talbot wants to know why we aren’t talking about author and sexologist Shere Hite. | The New Yorker
- “I don’t want any conclusions.” Hermione Lee and Adam Phillips discuss psychoanalysis, pessimism, and poetry. | Interview
- Lea Ypi, Joy Williams and Julia Wiedlocha have a conversation about translation. | The Dial
- On the “logical architecture” of Edgar Allan Poe’s writing process. | JSTOR Daily
- Move over, Heated Rivalry. Pete Segall looks into Don DeLillo’s funniest novel: a secret hockey sex romp. | Defector
- NPR considers Iran through the eyes of its artists, filmmakers, and novelists. | NPR
- Grace Byron considers the endless hypocrisy—and banality—of Bari Weiss. | The Nation
- “These bantering, randomly selected emails seem to show that Epstein wasn’t depraved, corrupt, or dodgy some of the time. He was depraved, corrupt, and proud of it all day long.” Anne Enright reads a full day of Jeffrey Epstein’s emails. | NYRB
- Why you should care about your right to anonymity online in the face of “unprecedented levels of mass surveillance and censorship.” | The Intercept
- Thomas Morton remembers his friend and Tyrant founder, Giancarlo DiTrapano. | The Paris Review
- Box Hill author Adam Mars-Jones and Pillion director Harry Lighton on the process of translating the novel into the film. | Publishers Weekly
Also on Lit Hub:
Art, repression and exile with Svetlana Satchkova • This month’s best sci-fi and fantasy books • How lying can help—and hurt—us • Caroline Carlson highlights upcoming children’s books • Action, hope, and love in the face of book censorship • New poetry in March • Read from Jonathan Galassi’s book-length poem • Your literary guide to Baltimore • The influence of class and queerness on James Merrill’s poetry • Iconic actors in the age of generative AI • The women of the canon of bear literature • Colm Tóibín considers the short fiction of Mary Lavin • F. Scott Fitzgerald on his fight with insomnia • The plight of the monarch butterfly • Before the advent of AI, there were (and still are) ghostwriters • Gisèle Pelicot’s memoir as an act of defiance • On translating and publishing Kanako Nishi • Family, faith and national history in Assad’s Syria • How writing a book about diaries changed how Betsy Rubiner wrote in her own • How Christianity shaped post-Civil War America • The Haunting of Hill House through the lens of raising children • The Independent Press Top 40 Bestsellers for fiction and nonfiction • Hello and welcome to Dirt Books • Camonghne Felix on the liberatory potential of poetry • 5 book reviews you need to read this week • Expanding educational opportunities to carve paths away from poverty • Read Carolina Ebeid’s poem, “The Terrible Years.” • Are we reviewing ourselves to death? • Stories from America’s caregiving crisis • The ascent of Pitchfork and the early days of online music criticism • Jess deCourcy Hinds celebrates the librarians who inspired her • The best reviewed books of the week • On turning a magazine article into a book • Larry Sultan on art and ambiguity • Read “French Walk,” a poem by Anna Lena Phillips Bell
