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Lit Hub Daily

April 10, 2026

TODAY: In 1847, newspaper tycoon Joseph J. Pulitzer, namesake of the Pulitzer Prizes, is born.

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How a pulp magazine built American science fiction: “For better (and often worse), Amazing Stories set the template and idiom, language and look, of what people think science fiction is.” | Lit Hub Craft

Daphne Du Meowier (yes, you read that right) introduces you to some of America’s best bookshop pets. | Lit Hub Bookstores

Molly Crabapple considers history as a “necromantic art” and shares 10 tips for conjuring the lived past. | Lit Hub Craft

Virginia McGee Richards on the enslaved men who dug South Carolina’s New Cut Canal. | Lit Hub History

THIS WEEK ON THE HUB: Celebrating the inaugural National Black Bookstore day! · Here are the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 honorees · And here are the winners of the 2026 Windham-Campbell Prizes.

“Most of the joy I have known has been a kind of escape hatch from pain—a type of joy despite circumstances.” Kate Bowler examines the appeal of junk. | Lit Hub Memoir

Ben Lerner’s Transcription, Patrick Radden Keefe’s London Falling, and Caro Claire Burke’s Yesteryear all feature among the best reviewed books of the week. | Book Marks

“In a small city in Italy, a woman removes her shoes, / cups them to her chest, and tiptoes the cobblestone streets.” Read “Dispatch From a New York Times Article the Day Mary Oliver Died,” a poem by Megan Gannon from the collection Dispatch From Every Second Guess. | Lit Hub Poetry

“You sit at the edge of the bed watching your husband who looks as if he were sleeping.” Read from Binnie Kirshenbaum’s novel, Counting Backwards. | Lit Hub Fiction

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EXPECTING INEQUITY

“Stunning, enraging, and extremely necessary, Expecting Inequity is a love letter to black women and an urgent call to action for everybody.” –Paul Butler, MSNBC legal analyst; author of Chokehold

Learn More

“We must always be searching for new language and new words to help us articulate the scope and nuances of the problems we are most desperate to solve.” Camonghne Felix on the need for new language for this moment. | Harper’s Bazaar

Nitsuh Abebe traces the evolution of “gatekeeping.” | The New York Times Magazine

“If there remains a difference between literature and content, the influencer novel suggests how unstable that difference has become.” Charlie Tyson examines how influencers show up in literature. | The Baffler

Sam Adams separates fact from urban legend in the case of video store staple, Faces of Death. | Slate

Alex Gil on discovering a lost version of Aimé Césaire’s play ……And the Dogs Were Silent: “Césaire transforms the historical revolution into a founding myth for Black freedom, at a time when there were still anticolonial battles to be fought…” | Public Books

Helen DeWitt turned down the Windham-Campbell prize due to promotional requirements. | The Guardian