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Lit Hub Weekly

February 2 - 6, 2026

TODAY: In 1823, Ann Radcliffe dies.

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Toni Morrison considers Blackness in the literary canon and what Flannery O’Connor’s fiction reveals about race in America. | Lit Hub Criticism

Sasha Han talks to Maggie O’Farrell, the author of Hamnet, about grief, Shakespeare, and adapting her novel to the screen. | Lit Hub In Conversation

Maris Kreizman tracks down the publishing world in the Epstein Files: “I don’t recommend doing this; I truly believe it made me physically ill.” | Lit Hub Politics

“I take both my Jewishness and my Americanness as honors and responsibilities.” Lily Meyer on Philip Roth, anti-Zionism, and American Judaism. | Lit Hub Memoir

SUPERFAN

From National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honoree Jenny Tinghui Zhang, a novel about a pop idol and his superfan, whose stories shockingly collide.

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“There is no correct way through this. You follow the advice that circulates, until it no longer applies. The circumstance is supernatural—a force majeure.” Anthony Dinh Tran on losing home and rebuilding in the year after the Eaton Fire. | Los Angeles Review of Books

Brian Raferty charts the rise of Hannibal Lecter-as-unlikely-antihero. | Longreads

Why content produced by today’s “slopagandists” isn’t so different from good old fashioned yellow journalism. | The Verge

Rebecca Mead considers the literature of “good mothers.” | The New Yorker

Eve Fairbanks on South African apartheid and why no one benefits from the police state. | The Dial

“The resonance of Said’s books in our particular moment shows that short-term calculus is not always the most relevant measure of their value.” Rebecca Ruth Gould on reading Edward Said in the context of the Gaza genocide. | Los Angeles Review of Books

In Richard L. Hasen’s book, The Voting Wars, he made the case for nationalizing elections. Trump has changed his mind. | Slate

A POWERFUL DEBUT

Reena Shah’s Every Happiness is an extraordinary novel about immigration, sapphic yearning, and female friendship, set in India and the United States.

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Darya Tsymbalyuk on Russia’s war on Ukraine and the grammar of survival. | Public Books

Monica Potts explores the gender politics of Trump’s war on higher ed and the student loan crisis. | The New Republic

Krys Malcolm Belc on rebuilding a safe haven in Minnesota: The job is simple, and involves a lot of standing around: volunteers are there to observe and to alert, as a protective measure so our neighbors’ kids and their parents don’t get kidnapped before they get to have their own golden post-drop off hour.” | Vogue

Eli Cugini tracks the ascent of fan fiction in publishing. | Defector

Hiromitsu Koiso on translating Anne Carson and Teju Cole into Japanese. | Asymptote

Harris Solomon talks to Edna Bonhomme, author of A History of the World in Six Plagues, about the history and future of health. | Public Books

“Our lack of knowledge about Shakespeare as a man, and our distance from his world, make it easier for us to fill his spaces with our own imaginings.” On The Bard’s endless cycle of death and rebirth. | The Baffler