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Lit Hub Daily

July 2, 2026

TODAY: In 1977, Vladimir Nabokov dies.

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Here is the Frederick Douglass speech we should all be revisiting on the Fourth of July. | Lit Hub History

These 10 great children’s books out in July include new work from Jaque Jours, Celeste Pewter, Sumayyah Beck and more. | Lit Hub Reading Lists

“Am I the asshole for refusing an invitation to submit work?” And other questions answered this week by Kristen Arnett. | Lit Hub Advice

Ten great nonfiction titles to read in July, featuring Books by Cal Flyn, Eyal Weitzman, Michael Cunningham, and more. | Lit Hub Reading Lists

“If you find yourself hanging on every word of a whispered story, chances are the reader will too.” On John Updike and small town literary gossip. | Lit Hub Craft

Victoria Chang, Anna Journey, Phillip B. Williams, and more poets have incredible new work out this month. | Lit Hub Poetry

Here are this week’s Independent Press Top 40 Bestsellers for fiction and nonfiction. | Lit Hub Bookstores

“The desire for human connection, and the desire to commemorate that connection, transcends everything.” 5 book reviews you need to read this week. | Book Marks

July’s best new sci-fi and fantasy books will transport you to worlds of sapphic knights and demon sacrifices. | Lit Hub Reading Lists

This week on the podcast PASSAGES: On Morrison, Namwali Serpell and Saeed Jones discuss Toni Morrison, “Master of Shade.” | Lit Hub In Conversation

“What a lot of people don’t appreciate these days is that as recently as the first half of the last century, what they called literature was a very, very different thing to the thing we have now.” Read from Guillermo Stitch’s new novel, The Coast of Everything. | Lit Hub Fiction

NEW STORIES FROM A CONTEMPORARY MASTER

Lucy Caldwell has been hailed as “one of the best practitioners of the short-form craft” (Financial Times). Set in Ireland, the UK, and the US, the eight stories in Devotions explore love, grief, and the ways we find shelter in each other.

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Samer Abu Hawwash and Huda J. Fakhreddine discuss Palestinian poetry in a time of genocide. | Asymptote

Kyle Mandell dives into the archives of The Jewish Gazette, an Irish-Jewish newspaper of the 1930s. | JSTOR Daily

Five years after Anthony Broadwater was cleared of sexually assaulting Alice Sebold, Joaquin Sapien returns to the story. | ProPublica

“One might have thought it a good idea to include some scholars who are informed by or at least somewhat sympathetic to some of the contemporary trends being criticized.” Richard Moran on the wrong way to criticize the humanities. | Boston Magazine

“Censuring works without having encountered them firsthand, misrepresenting facts, and taking elements wildly out of context became the strategy of the cultural warriors.” How culture wars feed into art censorship. | The Baffler

Exploring the genius of board books through the work of Sandra Boynton. | The New York Times

SOME LOVE STORIES ARE BIGGER
THAN JUST TWO PEOPLE

For readers of David Nicholls and Sally Rooney comes a new love story that’s at once tender and electrifying—told by everyone but the main characters.

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