Lit Hub
@literaryhub.bsky.social
A daily literary website highlighting the best in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and criticism.
https://linktr.ee/lithub_
https://linktr.ee/lithub_
Joseph Luzzi chronicles a Renaissance-Era orphanage in Florence: “The surge of their salvaged lives coursed through me like an electric current.”
The Innocenti: The Renaissance-Era Orphanage in Florence
In the summer of 2019, I had lunch in Florence with a friend, an art historian, and afterward we decided to take a walk. Along the way, we passed by the Piazza della Santis-sima Annunziata and the …
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November 24, 2025 at 4:00 PM
Joseph Luzzi chronicles a Renaissance-Era orphanage in Florence: “The surge of their salvaged lives coursed through me like an electric current.”
The bracket finals are here! “Cat Person” and Joyce Carol Oates square off in the fight to officially be named the most iconic moment of the literary internet.
What Was Literary Twitter? The Bracket *Championship Round*
We’ve reached the finals, after a week of nostalgia and a weekend of quarterfinal voting. The final two are a fitting last pairing, though we were sad to see Should writers read? and @GuyInYourMFA …
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November 24, 2025 at 3:30 PM
The bracket finals are here! “Cat Person” and Joyce Carol Oates square off in the fight to officially be named the most iconic moment of the literary internet.
Brittany Allen has some ideas for the live-action Eloise.
Rejected pitches for the live-action Eloise.
Eloise, the OG enfant terrible best known for causing mayhem at the Plaza Hotel, is getting a live adaptation. And an unlikely duo is behind it: Ryan Reynolds and Amy Sherman-Palladino, of Deadpool…
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November 23, 2025 at 8:00 PM
Brittany Allen has some ideas for the live-action Eloise.
“The whole skirmish is obscuring the insides of both collections—which AI covers tend to do. But both authors have been quick to distinguish form from content.”
Two books with AI-generated covers have been disqualified from New Zealand’s top book prize.
Somewhere on the goofy/sad spectrum in AI slop news, today two novels up for the prestigious Ockham New Zealand Book Award were disqualified on the basis of their AI cover art. Obligate Carnivore, …
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November 23, 2025 at 6:00 PM
“The whole skirmish is obscuring the insides of both collections—which AI covers tend to do. But both authors have been quick to distinguish form from content.”
If you can’t get enough of Wicked, check out the very first cinematic take on The Wizard of Oz.
Wicked on the brain? Watch the original 1910 film adaptation of The Wizard of Oz.
If you’ve been watching the trials of the Wicked press tour with bated breath—or if you’ve been clenching your wand for nine straight months, just waiting for the release of a certain c…
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November 23, 2025 at 4:01 PM
If you can’t get enough of Wicked, check out the very first cinematic take on The Wizard of Oz.
Our greatest tool for fighting AI might actually be poetry.
Can “adversarial poetry” save us from AI?
Turns out, the Terminator movies would have been more realistic if Sarah Conner had a poetry MFA. In a new paper titled “Adversarial Poetry as a Universal Single-Turn Jailbreak Mechanism in Large L…
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November 22, 2025 at 8:00 PM
Our greatest tool for fighting AI might actually be poetry.
What made us happy this week? Alison Roman’s newest book, A Knight’s Tale, new times with old friends, and more!
Here’s what’s making us happy this week.
Such a lot, readers! Forget your troubles, and come on over to Lit Hub! A lot of the gang got together IRL this week, thanks to the National Book Awards. Emily Temple is thrilled to confirm that se…
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November 22, 2025 at 6:01 PM
What made us happy this week? Alison Roman’s newest book, A Knight’s Tale, new times with old friends, and more!
Catch up on what happened this week with these Venn diagrams.
This week’s news in Venn diagrams.
With our “What was Literary Twitter?” bracket (don’t forget to vote!) and the National Book Awards happening all in the same week, I’ve been very sleepy lately. Please send …
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November 22, 2025 at 4:00 PM
Catch up on what happened this week with these Venn diagrams.
“On Friday as always I built the damn machine.” Read “The Machine” from Max Delsohn’s new collection, Crawl.
“The Machine”
On Friday as always I built the damn machine. As always I washed each individual part—the hopper, the spigot, the nozzle, the pump, the washers, the gaskets, the nuts, the screws—with scalding-hot …
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November 21, 2025 at 9:30 PM
“On Friday as always I built the damn machine.” Read “The Machine” from Max Delsohn’s new collection, Crawl.
“Moved outdoors, my novel finds its purpose and momentum.” Benjamin Wood on taking it outside.
Outdoor Manual: Benjamin Wood on Taking It Outside
This first appeared in Lit Hub’s Craft of Writing newsletter—sign up here. Every story has an equilibrium to be disturbed, and this one opens with a stranger on my doorstep. He stands bright-eyed b…
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November 21, 2025 at 8:30 PM
“Moved outdoors, my novel finds its purpose and momentum.” Benjamin Wood on taking it outside.
Matthew Davis explores the contradictory stories behind the meaning of Mount Rushmore.
On the Many—and Contradictory—Histories of Mt. Rushmore
Back at Mount Rushmore the following day, I looked at the four presidents from the Grand View Terrace, the only spot at the actual memorial that offers an uninterrupted frontal view of Gutzon Borgl…
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November 21, 2025 at 7:30 PM
Matthew Davis explores the contradictory stories behind the meaning of Mount Rushmore.
Joy Williams’s The Pelican Child, John Edgar Wideman’s Languages of Home, and Solvej Balle’s On the Calculation of Volume (Book III) all feature among the best reviewed books of the week.
The Best Reviewed Books of the Week
Featuring Joy Williams, John Edgar Wideman, Solvej Balle, and more
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November 21, 2025 at 6:30 PM
Joy Williams’s The Pelican Child, John Edgar Wideman’s Languages of Home, and Solvej Balle’s On the Calculation of Volume (Book III) all feature among the best reviewed books of the week.
Reposted by Lit Hub
Hard to know how this is going to shake out! The remaining four are all killer no filler
I also spoke to @danaschwartz.bsky.social, a.k.a. GuyInYourMFA, about making the quarterfinals and about Literary Twitter fame!
Get in there and vote!
I also spoke to @danaschwartz.bsky.social, a.k.a. GuyInYourMFA, about making the quarterfinals and about Literary Twitter fame!
Get in there and vote!
Only two match-ups remain before we move on to the final round! Vote in our What Was Literary Twitter? bracket to determine the greatest moment of the literary internet.
What Was Literary Twitter? The Bracket *Day 5*
Day five and only four remain! Pour out a cold plum for yesterday’s runner-ups, including “This Is Just To Say,” bad art friend, and the transparency and advocacy campaign #PublishingPaidMe The fou…
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November 21, 2025 at 4:25 PM
Hard to know how this is going to shake out! The remaining four are all killer no filler
I also spoke to @danaschwartz.bsky.social, a.k.a. GuyInYourMFA, about making the quarterfinals and about Literary Twitter fame!
Get in there and vote!
I also spoke to @danaschwartz.bsky.social, a.k.a. GuyInYourMFA, about making the quarterfinals and about Literary Twitter fame!
Get in there and vote!
Gaby Iori explains the connection between the death of tech idealism and the rise of homelessness in Northern California.
On the Death of Tech Idealism (and Rise of the Homeless) in Northern California
Fuckers. I couldn’t get the word out of my head, because he wouldn’t stop saying it. I was sitting in the tiled courtyard of the Mediterranean-style home of an old acquaintance, a venture capitalis…
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November 21, 2025 at 5:30 PM
Gaby Iori explains the connection between the death of tech idealism and the rise of homelessness in Northern California.
@melissabroder.bsky.social revisits the “Christian mysticism, absurdism, existentialism, or the Zen Buddhist conception of present-moment awareness” of Jennifer Dawson‘s forgotten 1961 classic, The Ha-Ha.
Melissa Broder on Jennifer Dawson’s Forgotten 1961 Classic The Ha-Ha
In The Ha-Ha, Jennifer Dawson relies on her own history as a patient in a psychiatric hospital to tell the story of Josephine Traughton, a young woman who suffers a breakdown while studying at Oxfo…
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November 21, 2025 at 4:30 PM
@melissabroder.bsky.social revisits the “Christian mysticism, absurdism, existentialism, or the Zen Buddhist conception of present-moment awareness” of Jennifer Dawson‘s forgotten 1961 classic, The Ha-Ha.
Only two match-ups remain before we move on to the final round! Vote in our What Was Literary Twitter? bracket to determine the greatest moment of the literary internet.
What Was Literary Twitter? The Bracket *Day 5*
Day five and only four remain! Pour out a cold plum for yesterday’s runner-ups, including “This Is Just To Say,” bad art friend, and the transparency and advocacy campaign #PublishingPaidMe The fou…
buff.ly
November 21, 2025 at 3:30 PM
Only two match-ups remain before we move on to the final round! Vote in our What Was Literary Twitter? bracket to determine the greatest moment of the literary internet.
“Sometimes, things are so clear in your mind that you remember everything: images, parts of strangers’ faces, empty rooms, sounds and words, someone’s voice.” Read from Marek Torčík’s novel Memory Burn, translated by Graeme Dibble and Suzanne Dibble.
Memory Burn
Sometimes, things are so clear in your mind that you remember everything: images, parts of strangers’ faces, empty rooms, sounds and words, someone’s voice. But the thing you remember most of all a…
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November 20, 2025 at 9:30 PM
“Sometimes, things are so clear in your mind that you remember everything: images, parts of strangers’ faces, empty rooms, sounds and words, someone’s voice.” Read from Marek Torčík’s novel Memory Burn, translated by Graeme Dibble and Suzanne Dibble.
Lola Lafon on the fine line between veneration and exploitation and spending the night in the annex of the Anne Frank House.
On the Venerated—and Exploited—Legacy of Anne Frank
It’s her. A silhouette at the window, emerging from the shadows, just a girl. She learns over the ledge, drawn, no doubt by laughter she’s heard in the street: it’s coming from an elegant processio…
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November 20, 2025 at 8:30 PM
Lola Lafon on the fine line between veneration and exploitation and spending the night in the annex of the Anne Frank House.
“Hers is a fiction of the absurd, born of a woozy America that doesn’t know how to move forward.” 5 book reviews you need to read this week.
5 Reviews You Need to Read This Week
Our treasure chest of terrific reviews this week includes Robert Pinsky on The Poems of Seamus Heaney, Hanif Abdurraqib on John Edgar Wideman’s Languages of Home, John Banville on Selected Letters of…
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November 20, 2025 at 7:30 PM
“Hers is a fiction of the absurd, born of a woozy America that doesn’t know how to move forward.” 5 book reviews you need to read this week.
“As Johnson told The Guardian, authors typically have very little power over their cover art. And it smarts to see the conversation around one’s book become dominated by the slop machine.”
Two books with AI-generated covers have been disqualified from New Zealand’s top book prize.
Somewhere on the goofy/sad spectrum in AI slop news, today two novels up for the prestigious Ockham New Zealand Book Award were disqualified on the basis of their AI cover art. Obligate Carnivore, …
buff.ly
November 20, 2025 at 7:00 PM
“As Johnson told The Guardian, authors typically have very little power over their cover art. And it smarts to see the conversation around one’s book become dominated by the slop machine.”
In which @maris.bsky.social encounters MAHA anti-vaxxers the Texas Book Festival (and explains why books are the perfect medium for grifters to make themselves heard).
Amid the MAHA Anti-Vaxxers at the Texas Book Festival
When I walked into the hotel lobby the first person I saw was a woman with enormous lips wearing a T-shirt that said BAN ASSAULT VACCINES. Wow, Austin really has changed, I thought. I used to come …
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November 20, 2025 at 6:30 PM
In which @maris.bsky.social encounters MAHA anti-vaxxers the Texas Book Festival (and explains why books are the perfect medium for grifters to make themselves heard).
In case you missed it:
Here are the winners of the National Book Awards, including Rabih Alameddine and Omar El Akkad.
The winners of this year’s National Book Awards have just been announced at a ritzy gala in downtown Manhattan. Rabih Alameddine’s The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother) won the …
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November 20, 2025 at 6:00 PM
In case you missed it:
@vxchang.bsky.social examines intimacy in the age of chatbots: “If the myth of Pygmalion imagines love perfected, distilled from the body, digital platforms deploy that ideal as a design principle.”
lithub.com/pygmalions-c...
lithub.com/pygmalions-c...
Pygmalion’s Chatbot: Vanessa Chang on Intimacy in the Age of AI
When OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced that ChatGPT would soon be able to talk dirty, the Internet erupted in equal parts fascination and moral panic. Think pieces proliferated, debating the ethics o…
lithub.com
November 20, 2025 at 5:30 PM
@vxchang.bsky.social examines intimacy in the age of chatbots: “If the myth of Pygmalion imagines love perfected, distilled from the body, digital platforms deploy that ideal as a design principle.”
lithub.com/pygmalions-c...
lithub.com/pygmalions-c...
Lily Meyer talks to Madeleine Arenivar, translator of Yuliana Ortiz Ruano’s debut novel Carnaval Fever, about preserving poetic language and letting a book shine.
Madeleine Arenivar on the Rhythm of Translation, Preserving Poetic Language, and Letting a Novel’s Voice Shine
The translator Madeleine Arenivar, who lives in Quito, Ecuador, was a student in perhaps the most enjoyable class I’ve ever taught: an online translation course whose participants were, without exc…
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November 20, 2025 at 5:00 PM
Lily Meyer talks to Madeleine Arenivar, translator of Yuliana Ortiz Ruano’s debut novel Carnaval Fever, about preserving poetic language and letting a book shine.
“Today’s Red Scare is as much about distraction as it is about indoctrination” On Zohran Mamdani, Taylor Swift, and the evolution of the Red Scare.
On Zohran Mamdani, Taylor Swift, and the Evolution of the Red Scare
On Friday, November 7, President Trump issued a proclamation asserting the week of November 2 to 8 as “Anti-Communism Week.” The announcement conjectured that “for more than a century, communism ha…
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November 20, 2025 at 4:30 PM
“Today’s Red Scare is as much about distraction as it is about indoctrination” On Zohran Mamdani, Taylor Swift, and the evolution of the Red Scare.