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When a Box is More Than Just A Box
Take a break from the news We publish your favorite authors—even the ones you haven’t read yet. Get new fiction, essays, and poetry delivered to your inbox. YOUR INBOX IS LIT Enjoy strange, diverting work from The Commuter on Mondays, absorbing fiction from Recommended Reading on Wednesdays, and a roundup of our best work of…
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Lit Hub Daily: November 17, 2023
TODAY: In 2013, Doris Lessing, British author and the oldest laureate of the Nobel Prize in Literature at age 88, dies at 94. (Photo by Larry Amstrong for the Los Angeles Times.) Also on Lit Hub: Learning to ride a motorcycle after 50 • New poetry by Sebastián H. Páramo • Read from Gabriel Bump’s latest…
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Choosing your next non-fiction book: 7 things to consider for every reader
Non-fiction reading is a gateway to the profound knowledge and insights the world has to offer. Unlike fiction, which takes you into imaginative realms, non-fiction invites you to explore the reality, history, science, and ideas that shape our world. It’s a medium through which you can embark on intellectual adventures, broaden your horizons, and become…
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The Mainstreaming of Historical Fiction
Historical fiction is suddenly everywhere. It’s on the bestseller list, in college classrooms, and probably on the lap of the woman sitting next to you on the train. A genre that at one point felt maligned and boring—neither serious nor sought after—has undergone a full-on transformation. In just the past few months, some of the…
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Leave the World Behind is a Tense, Uneasy Thriller
When I saw Leave the World Behind, the new film written and directed by Sam Esmail and based on the National Book Award-nominated novel by Rumaan Alam, I kept flashing back to the days in my 7th grade English class when we learned about story arcs. I remember my teacher drawing a lopsided mountain on…
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In These Short Stories, Characters Young and Old Struggle to Connect
In new collections by Yiyun Li, Claire Keegan, Alexandra Chang and Lore Segal, interpersonal bonds are created and destroyed. The short-story writer “can’t create compassion with compassion, or emotion with emotion, or thought with thought,” Flannery O’Connor wrote. “When you can state the theme of a story, when you can separate it from the story…
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A Masterpiece About a Masterpiece, for All Ages
An enchanting work by Italy’s foremost living children’s author is finally available in English. GLOWRUSHES, by Roberto Piumini. Translated by Leah Janeczko. Once in a great while a book comes along that’s equally enthralling for children and the people they call grown-ups — a book playful and accessible enough to hold a young person’s attention…
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M.C. Benner Dixon on Creating Persuasive Metaphors
A version of this essay first appeared in Lit Hub’s Craft of Writing newsletter—sign up here. My name has always felt, somehow, apart from me. But names, like all words, are approximations. From the day of my birth, I was called Christie, though it wasn’t really my name. My real name was Christine. Well, my middle name…
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How Michele Wallace Sought Black Women’s Liberation Through Art
An extended community nurtured the achievements of The Sisterhood. Many other Black feminist groups and individual intellectuals in the 1970s and early 1980s shared The Sisterhood’s goals of publication and publicity for Black women writers, as well as the belief that political and social change could and should be made through culture. In this larger…
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“When My Mother’s Portrait Sings.” A Poem by Sebastián H. Páramo
When she prays in the living room.When her son leaves the house.When she puts her head down, chanting rosary after rosary.When she gifts him sweets, her pozole, anything for her firstborn.When she signs the Father, the Son, & the Holy Ghost—she wants nothingWhen she wants nothing but steamed salmon—vegetable medleys in February.When food reminds her…