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Lit Hub Weekly

July 21 - 25, 2025

TODAY: In 1856, George Bernard Shaw is born.

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“The terror of ICE has pushed immigrant families in Ventura County to their deaths in ways fast and slow.” Steven W. Thrasher on what these brutal raids signal for the future. | Lit Hub Politics

“Magic and ideology are both practices of belief.” On the cluttered bird’s nest of Leonora Carrington’s The Stone Door. | Lit Hub Criticism

What if Charlie Brown were a socialist? On the past and future of Malfada, Argentina’s iconic comic strip. | Lit Hub Art

From Dickens to Dean Koontz, Ed Simon explores prolific authors, their habits, and the persistent need to produce. | Lit Hub Craft

IF DESTINY IS REAL, IS THERE SUCH A THING
AS CHANGING IT?

Explore this powerful short story from Abraham Verghese, the New York Times bestselling author of The Covenant of Water, free with Prime & Kindle Unlimited.

Read Now

Lincoln Michel dives into the latest anemic “state of the novel” discourse. | Counter Craft

Rachel Kushner shares some of the books on the syllabus of her Stanford creative writing class. | The New Yorker

Jamieson Webster meditates on dreams, ashes, and the structure of sacrifice. | The Paris Review

“Yet perhaps what is more intriguing is which lines the post-apocalyptic genre have not crossed.” Isaac Yuen looks at literature and film of the post-post apocalypse. | Public Books

Maya C. Popa explores the life and career of Laura Gilpin, the poet best remembered as the author of “The Two-headed Calf.” | Poetry

“The contemporary world is so complex and protean that it is no longer possible to describe it with linear prose and squeeze it into a traditional novel’s structure.” Joshua Cohen and Vladimir Sorokin in conversation. | The Paris Review

Helen Chazan asks, what makes a comic transgressive? | The Comics Journal

A PEOPLE’S HISTORY OF THE DANDY

The Dandy, by Peter K. Andersson, is the first ever history of everyday dandies. Showing that dandyism is far from just an elite phenomenon represented by famous poets and artists, but a popular youth subculture that grew into an influential cultural movement.

Available Now

“This is what the rivers told me: that life is always and utterly lived in flow and in relation.” Robert Macfarlane and Terry Tempest Williams in conversation. | Orion

Lola Seaton on Sheila Heti and the illusion of effortlessness. | New York Review of Books

“My book only briefly mentions Gaza’s parents and kids, and it triggers protests.” Aymann Ismail on what happened when pro-Israel protestors came to his reading. | Slate

Jonathon Atkinson remembers the “inarticulability” of Lyn Hejinian through her book-length poem, Fall Creek. | n+1

Alexandra Billet considers the gutting of public broadcasting, and the necessity of “creative and informational spaces […] shielded from the influence of commerce.” | Jacobin

“Technosolutionist approaches to disability as something that can be eradicated through technological innovation exacerbate existing forms of erasure by promising a future without disabled people.” Anya Heise-Von Der Lippe on disability erasure and technoablism. | Public Books

Rami Abu Jamous details the death of Obeida, one of hundreds of Palestinians murdered while waiting for aid distribution to feed his family. | The Nation

“In the shadow of rhetorical warfare and actual persecution, trans writing about sex has acquired a curiously contradictory character.” Emily Zhou explores memoirs of trans women’s sexualities. | Defector