Literary Hub

TODAY: In 1964, Federico García Lorca’s play The House of Bernarda Alba, completed just before his assassination in 1936, receives its first performance in Spain.

Spencer Reece considers the life and work of Jaime Gil de Biedma and resilience of art in the face of fascism. | Lit Hub Biography
Dr. Seema Jilani on the hypocrisy of Western liberal institutions and why “nothing could have prepared me for a Gaza emergency room.” | Lit Hub Politics
Ted Chiang revisits J.D. Beresford’s The Hampdenshire Wonder and examines one of literature’s earliest depictions of superintelligence. | Lit Hub Criticism
Julie Zigoris chronicles how the San Francisco Rare Book Fair showcased the resilience of booksellers in the wake of the LA wildfires. | Lit Hub Bookstores
“The gastrointestinal agonies of writers, it turns out, forms practically its own canon, one that dates back almost to the beginning of Western science’s attempts to understand the digestive tract.” Will Boast presents a literary history of indigestion. | VQR
Robin Robertson remembers the Scottish poet and novelist John Burnside, who died in May. | Poetry
“I’m writing partly to figure out what I think of events or people or trends.” Kara Rota and Curtis Sittenfeld in conversation. | Dirt
In the debut issue of Amulet, “a new literary magazine offering a fresh perspective on spirituality, religion, and mysticism for seekers and skeptics alike,” Sheila Heti on writing about the ineffable. | Amulet
“Every time I lift a barbell, I’m incapable of thinking beyond what my body is doing.” How power lifting made R.O. Kwon a better writer. | Harper’s Bazaar
“Garner has given us diaries that read like they are inventing a new language made from utterly familiar materials: fresh, raw, vibrating with life.” Leslie Jamison meditates on Helen Garner’s diaries. | The Paris Review
“Meanwhile, here on earth, the syrup of wahoo still splashes around inside Tom’s books.” Gary Lippman remembers his friend, Tom Robbins. | Los Angeles Review of Books
A brief history of the banning of Oscar Wilde’s Salome. | Smithsonian Magazine
Sophie Lewis talks to Grace Byron about what happens when “emancipating womanhood is not inherently incompatible with, for instance, eugenic or imperial violence.” | The Baffler
“The political situation today, I am sorry to say, is much worse than it was when the book was written.” Andrea Long Chu meditates on Females after six years. | n+1
Elon Green investigates Toni Morrison’s lost play. | Vulture
Here’s a terrifying primer on what Trump is trying to do to the Department of Education. | Vox
How publishers are preparing for Trump’s tariffs. | Publishers Weekly
“Does my father’s journey away from home and back to it four decades later deserve the name of an epic? If not, what form should my father’s story take?” Viet Thanh Nguyen on migration and family. | The Paris Review
“And suddenly, there it was right in front of me: a dead pufferfish on the sand.” Lauren Markham on how we memorialize what we’re losing to climate change. | Broadcast