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Lit Hub Daily

September 2, 2026

TODAY: In 1973, J.R.R. Tolkien dies.

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Former political prisoner Abdelrahman ElGendy tells Samaa Khullar about writing from inside a cell. | Lit Hub In Conversation

Janet L. Jones considers Ann Patchett’s Whistler and unravels what literature gets right (and wrong) about horses. | Lit Hub Criticism

From Slow Horses to Cruel Intentions, this is the literary film and TV you need to stream in September. | Lit Hub Film

There’s nothing wrong with a little writerly competition! Laurie Petrou recommends books about literary rivalries by R.F. Kuang, Meg Wolitzer, Sally Rooney, and more. | Lit Hub Reading Lists

Jonathan Cheng on the time Billy Graham visited Pyongyang, from his Cundill Prize-Shortlisted Korean Messiah. | Lit Hub History

How Elizabeth Wellington Rollins created “mortal, modern counterparts” to the Three Graces in her debut novel. | Lit Hub Craft

“I’d long noticed the discrepancies between my idealism and my pragmatism—between my desire for a fully accessible world and the realities I saw all around me.” On visiting Helen Keller’s birthplace while deaf. | Lit Hub Memoir

“Evie eased onto the thin goose‑feather mattress and set her mouth to tell her man that it had been a good day, a good night, but Atlas whispered to her first.” Read from LaToya Watkins’s new novel, The Book of Chuck. | Lit Hub Fiction

A GHOST STORY MARIANA ENRÍQUEZ
COULDN'T PUT DOWN

Containing all the elements of a perfect ghost story, Last Day of a Prior Life is a richly atmospheric, disturbing, and dazzling gem of a novel that calls to mind the gothic tales of Shirley Jackson and the fractured realities of Black Mirror.

Learn More

Do booksellers think this is the end of reading? Joel Pinckney investigates. | Defector

Cameron Manley considers two new books on Putin’s authoritarianism: “In this political order, ideology has ceased to be merely a tool of the state and has become a way of perceiving reality itself.” | Los Angeles Review of Books

Why humanity should choose play over gamification. | Aeon

“There is no reason whatsoever for there to be so many megalomaniacal comic book writers in this world. One is a problem, two is a trend, and friend: there are more than two.” Tegan O’Neil examines the past, present, and future of Vertigo. | The Comics Journal

Marlon James on loving Buffy the Vampire Slayer (and other things). | Vulture

HOW MUCH DO AUTHORS ACTUALLY MAKE ON A BOOK?

Novelist Mary Adkins spent the last few weeks digging through thousands of publishing deals to find out—and on September 10th, she’s sharing all of it in a FREE workshop. Real advance numbers by genre, which categories are landing six figures, and whether it’s true that only celebrities sell memoir anymore (spoiler: it isn’t!). Can’t make it live? A recording will be available (but only if you register).

CUNDILL HISTORY