• “Why does the empathy we cultivate through literature often remain a performative gesture, confined to the realm of fiction and failing to take root in the real world?” Etaf Rum on reading and writing during crisis. | Lit Hub

• On the urgent wartime writings of Polish-American Nobel Laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer. | Lit Hub History

• “Einstein, stop telling God what to do.” Three moments in the life of a pretty famous scientist. | Lit Hub Biography

• One hundred years after the birth of Swedish literary prodigy Stig Dagerman, Diego Courchay goes in search of his typewriter. | Lit Hub

• Beth Kephart considers the eternal hope of rare books: “They keep what we can’t keep. They counterweight the dying.” | Lit Hub

• “When Michael Cunningham writes like himself, and not like an apostle, he is one of love’s greatest witnesses.” 5 Book Reviews You Need to Read This Week. | Book Marks

• From Sinan Antoon, poetry that gives voice to “a Palestinian child’s experience of Israeli bombardments, displacement, and a longing to return home.” | Words Without Borders

• “Never has a writer of such enviable talents displayed such undiminishing patience for his reader, such evident and unpretentious pleasure in the pedagogical function of good prose.” Sam Adler-Bell on George Schialabba. | Commonweal

• Adrienne Westenfeld talks to LeVar Burton about fighting for the right to read in an era of book bans. | Esquire

• In praise of Emily of New Moon, the oft-forgotten L.M. Montgomery novel that deserves a second look. | New York Times

• In the first installment of “Higher Gossip,” a column on sex and love, Lillian Fishman advises a reader to take advantage of “a rare opportunity to be surprised.” | The Point

Also on Lit Hub: Nina LaCour on finding a story in her own backyard • On the magic of magnetic force • Read from Mónica Ojeda’s newly translated novel, Nefando (tr. Sarah Booker)

• Chronicling the early days and inspirations of Willa Cather. | Lit Hub Biography

• “We all lie to ourselves. We manipulate with what phrases we leave behind.” Jenny Erpenbeck on spying, lying, and eros. | Lit Hub In Conversation

• Why Maurice, the 1987 film adaptation from Merchant Ivory, is a still-resonant queer text. | Lit Hub Film & TV

• When Europe was in its revolution era. | Lit Hub History

• Eve Moskowitz makes the case for wordless picture books—and recommends 12 of the best. | Lit Hub Parenting

• “For years, trans artists have alchemized disgust, rage, and monstrosity to give birth to cybernetic and primordial work. Rarely are they enshrined in the canon of transgressive women artists.” Grace Byron on bringing more trans artists into the transgressive canon. | Lux

• Take a look at the world’s greatest dictionary collection. | Atlas Obscura

• “Streisand will have not only the last word; she will have the most words, and also the most true ones.” Rachel Syme on My Name Is Barbra. | The New Yorker

• As schools across the US eliminate librarian positions, what will the consequences be for students? | Governing

• Bernardine Evaristo, Jeanette Winterson, Stephen Marche and more writers reflect on the threats and possibilities of AI. | The Guardian

Also on Lit Hub: James Elkins on the joy of immersion in a place • Finding love in the papers of an obscure medieval poet • Read from Gary Sernovitz’s latest novel, The Counting House

• 40 books to understand Palestine, from Ghassan Kanafani’s Men in the Sun to Adania Shibli’s Minor Detail. | Lit Hub Reading Lists

• “We believe that peace is possible and that it starts with choosing to protect civilians now.” A statement of solidarity with Gaza from more than 100 literary translators. | Lit Hub Politics

• Kali Fajardo-Anstine invites you into the Southwest lands of Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop. | Lit Hub Criticism

• 24 exciting new books published today. | The Hub

• This month’s Lit Hub Asks: 5 Authors, 7 Questions, No Wrong Answers features Jesse David Fox, Lexi Freiman, Lindsay Hunter, E. J. Koh, and Ed Park. | Lit Hub Questionnaire

• A gator is never just a gator: Rebecca Renner explores alligator poaching in the heart of the Everglades. | Lit Hub Nature

• Warren Bronson on the sacredness of prison libraries: “It’s the exploration, the rubbing elbows with those who are fellow seekers of a different stripe.” | Lit Hub

• Joanne McNeil on classism, Patricia Highsmith, and what minimum-wage jobs taught her about writing novels. | Lit Hub

• Required reading: Guernica has collected the work about Palestine it has published since 2010. | Guernica

• “There is no next book.” On the book club that’s been reading Finnegan’s Wake for 28 years. | The Guardian

• An ode to Jezebel, from the site’s former editor Kate Dries. | LA Times

• “We really feel death every second. We smell death everywhere.” Testimonies from Gaza. | n+1

• “‘Kairos’ is her most direct and sustained depiction of the historical rift she herself lived through and thus her most explicitly personal novel.” Ross Benjamin on Jenny Erpenbeck’s ambivalent nostalgia. | The Point

• Nine books to read if you love The Crown. | New York Times

Also on Lit Hub: The false promise of climate fiction • On building a personal library of bad behavior • Read from Celina Baljeet Basra’s debut novel, Happy

Also on Lit Hub:

• Read rapid-fire interviews with (almost) all the finalists for the 2023 National Book Award, before next week’s ceremony. | Lit Hub

• Bumping Pollock off his pedestal: Turns out, drip painting was actually invented by a Ukrainian grandmother. | Lit Hub Art

• How American critics established Jane Austen’s global reputation. | Lit Hub

• Is twinship the ideal relationship? Helena de Bres investigates. | Lit Hub Memoir

• Vanessa Lillie interviews Native booksellers about their picks for Native American Heritage Month. | CrimeReads

• Sigrid Nunez’s The Vulnerables, Barbra Streisand’s My Name is Barbra, and Ed Park’s Same Bed, Different Dreams all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. | Book Marks

• “I hope to at least find a copy of my own poetry book, maybe near my neighbor’s olive tree, but there is nothing but debris. Nothing but the smell of explosions.” Mosab Abu Toha on living under siege. | The New Yorker

• “Has the self/ ever been the subject/ of so much propaganda?” A poem by Fady Joudah. | New York Times

• A brief history of book theft. | JSTOR Daily

• “You can burn books, put their authors in prison, ban them or confiscate them. But tearing pages out is a punishment so nasty no one’s thought of it yet.” Ahmed Naji on the power of a prison library. | The Washington Post

• Some good news: Efforts to ban books are backfiring. | 13WHAM

• “Most of his evaluations on his trip are superficial or banal or laughably snotty. What intrigues is how quickly he demands that things make sense.” Vivian Gornick on Camus’s begrudging book tour. | NYRB

• Sigrid Nunez recommends some of her favorite books. | Elle

• “What I do know is that the answer to philistinism is art, the answer to barbarianism is civilisation, and in a culture war it may be that artists of all sorts can still, together, turn the barbarians away from the gates.” Salman Rushdie on peace, freedom, myth, and Barbenheimer. | The Guardian

• Predicting the National Book Awards… with data. | Public Books

• “Jewish security, liberty, and dignity will not be achieved by pulverizing Palestinian buildings, individuals, and social structures.” Read Peter Cole’s response to the Israel-Hamas war. | The Yale Review

• James D. White explores the legacy of Alexander Bogdanov, Russian revolutionary and sci-fi pioneer. | Jacobin

• Ben Ehrenreich talks to Gazan writer Asmaa al-Ghoul about her life and work, and her campaign to end the Israeli assault on Gaza. | Verso

• Don’t quit your day job (seriously): Kate Dwyer digs into the state of authors’ finances. | Esquire

• “Humanity has already passed the last off-ramp for a vast number of species, and it’s a lot harder to imagine how we get back to stable ground. So what do we tell our kids?” Aaron Regunberg on reading children’s books in an age of mass extinction. | The New Republic

• The feminist website Jezebel has been shuttered by G/O Media after 16 years of operation. | Nieman Lab

Also on Lit Hub:

Sigrid Nunez on writing a pandemic novel • Tracy K. Smith reveals her writing routine • How Stephanie Land wrote her latest memoir in a month • Diane Seuss explains the creative process behind the poem that matters most to her • Why Naoise Dolan learned Italian for her book tour • Jeremy Eichler on art, music, and the humanist spirit in the face of Nazi atrocities • What Marabou storks can teach us about thriving during apocalypse • Alice Sparberg Alexiou recounts her odyssey in search of a long-lost relative • On the lifesaving potential of Latin American passports in the Warsaw ghetto • Virginia Pye on the confidence it takes to write • What does “community” really mean? • Where fiction ends and reality begins • Why Lindsay Hunter loves true crime • What to do when you get your period… in space • Exploring the world’s richest source of lithium • Grace Elizabeth Hale reckons with the dark underbelly of cherished family story • A brief history of onions in America • What Joseph Stalin ate • A roundtable on immigrant farmwork, exploitation, and finding literary authenticity • Reclaiming freedom for feminism • How writing made us human • The bloody final days of the Dalton Gang • Why there should be more books about breakups

• “Throughout recorded history, humans have regarded the art of writing with awe and even reverence.” How writing made us human. | Lit Hub History

• Tom Clavin recounts the bloody, doomed final days of the infamous bandits the Dalton Gang. | Lit Hub History

• “Coppola has architected an entire career out of the aestheticization of a waiting woman.” On the emptiness of Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla. | Lit Hub Film & TV

• Sigrid Nunez’s The Vulnerables, Barbra Streisand’s My Name is Barbra, and Ed Park’s Same Bed, Different Dreams all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. | Book Marks

• “Humanity has already passed the last off-ramp for a vast number of species, and it’s a lot harder to imagine how we get back to stable ground. So what do we tell our kids?” Aaron Regunberg on reading children’s books in an age of mass extinction. | The New Republic

• What’s the future of books? Celebrity picks, imprints as brands, and “literary genre fiction.” | Esquire

• The feminist website Jezebel has been shuttered by G/O Media after 16 years of operation. | Nieman Lab

• “The protagonists of both novels also gain agency in language, whether through Way Way’s persistent letter-writing or Tango’s penchant for wordplay.” H.M.A. Leow considers the work of Burmese novelists Ma Ma Lay and Wendy Law-Yone. | JSTOR Daily

• “Better than anyone else, Wylie and his agency have figured out how to globalise and monetise literary prestige.” Alex Blasdel profiles Andrew Wylie. | The Guardian

Also on Lit Hub: Why there should be more books about breakups • Read “Orville,” a poem by Rudy Francisco • Read from Yasunari Kawabata’s newly translated novel, The Rainbow (tr. Haydn Trowell)

• Mark Kurlansky offers a brief history of onions in America. | Lit Hub History

• Bumping Pollock off his pedestal: Turns out, drip painting was actually invented by a Ukrainian grandmother. | Lit Hub Art

• “Stalin’s one and only culinary extravagance in those days was a bathtub full of pickled gherkins.” Witold Szabłowski on the culinary habits and preferences of the Soviet strongman. | Lit Hub Food

• “Too much responsibility, too many sharp blades, too many days working in hundred-degree temperatures.” Miguel M. Morales, Oswaldo Vargas, Lizbeth Luevano, and Julio Puente García discuss immigrant farmwork, exploitation, and finding literary authenticity. | Lit Hub Roundtable

• What Douglas Melville is reading now and next, from Freedom Flyers to Future Luxe. | Lit Hub Annotated Nightstand

• “A 970-page victory lap past all who ever doubted, diminished or dissed her.” 5 Book Reviews You Need to Read This Week. | Book Marks

• “What I do know is that the answer to philistinism is art, the answer to barbarianism is civilisation, and in a culture war it may be that artists of all sorts can still, together, turn the barbarians away from the gates.” Salman Rushdie on peace, freedom, myth, and Barbenheimer. | The Guardian

• Ben Ehrenreich talks to Gazan writer Asmaa al-Ghoul about her life and work, and her campaign to end the Israeli assault on Gaza. | Verso

• “The novel, a melodramatic saga of social climbing and doomed romance, is a deliberate anachronism in both its themes and its style.” Jess Bergman on Lies and Sorcery by Elsa Morante, the novelist who inspired Elena Ferrante. | The New Yorker

• Don’t quit your day job (seriously): Kate Dwyer digs into the state of authors’ finances. | Esquire

• “These novels depict a feminism in flight from demands for equality and toward a politics of grievance as it plays out in the bedroom.” Namwali Serpell considers the spate of “hit me” books (or “remaster novels”). | NYRB

Also on Lit Hub: Reclaiming freedom for feminism • New poetry from James Tate • Read from Jazmina Barrera’s newly translated novel, Cross-Stitch (tr. Christina MacSweeney)

• Read rapid-fire interviews with (almost) all the finalists for the 2023 National Book Award, before next week’s ceremony. | Lit Hub

• Is twinship the ideal relationship? Helena de Bres investigates. | Lit Hub Memoir

• A Gilded Age Kardashian: Why Apple TV+ made a mistake in passing on Sofia Coppola’s adaptation of The Custom of the Country. | Lit Hub Film & TV

• What to do when you get your period… in space: “Remember, space is awful. There is no gravity to pull fluids in a generally downward direction.” | Lit Hub

• Exploring the world’s richest source of lithium. | Lit Hub Science

• Lisa Gornick and Alice Elliott Dark discuss how their writing practices have developed over decades. | Lit Hub In Conversation

• Grace Elizabeth Hale reckons with the underbelly of cherished family story that intersects with the legacy of white supremacy. | Lit Hub History

• “I hope to at least find a copy of my own poetry book, maybe near my neighbor’s olive tree, but there is nothing but debris. Nothing but the smell of explosions.” Mosab Abu Toha on living under siege. | The New Yorker

• Sigrid Nunez recommends some of her favorite books. | Elle

• James D. White explores the legacy of Alexander Bogdanov, Russian revolutionary and sci-fi pioneer. | Jacobin

• Jean-Baptise Andrea has won the Prix Goncourt for his nearly 600-page novel, Veiller Sur Elle (Watching Over Her). | New York Times

• Good news for your holiday travel: Barbra Streisand’s memoir is 48 hours long on audiobook. | Variety

Also on Lit Hub: Nine retellings and reinventions of Noah’s Ark • New poetry by Zeina Hashem Beck • Read from Babette Deutsch’s newly reissued novel, Mask of Silenus

• Casey Plett wants to know: What does “community” really mean? | Lit Hub

• “True crime is storytelling. Like any form of literature, sometimes that storytelling is cliche.” Lindsay Hunter on why she loves true crime. | Lit Hub

• It’s another banner week for new books—here are 24 out today. | The Hub

• How Stephanie Land wrote her latest memoir in a month, and other insights from the Lit Hub Questionnaire. | Lit Hub Questionnaire

• “I found it joyless to treat the local language as a pothole for expats to step around.” Why Naoise Dolan learned Italian for her book tour. | Lit Hub

• Drew Johnson muses on the kaleidoscopic experience of reading Marguerite Young’s Miss Macintosh, My Darling. | Lit Hub Criticism

• “Children’s literature conjures a realm where we can imagine—together—something better than what is.” Miriam Udel on reading to her son while the world is on fire. | New York Times

• Predicting the National Book Awards… with data. | Public Books

• “Jewish security, liberty, and dignity will not be achieved by pulverizing Palestinian buildings, individuals, and social structures.” Read Peter Cole’s response to the Israel-Hamas war. |  The Yale Review

• Katie Yee talks to Weike Wang about humor, writing, and dog voices. | The Margins

• Two members of Moms for Liberty called the cops on a pair of school librarians over a YA fantasy novel. | The Daily Beast

Also on Lit Hub: Sigrid Nunez on the process of writing a pandemic novel • Salar Abdoh on where fiction ends and reality begins • Read from The Collected Stories of Dylan Thomas

• How American critics established Jane Austen’s global reputation. | Lit Hub

• “Poems are smarter than I am. Like dreams, they come out of the dark and lead me to uncanny arrivals.” Diane Seuss explains the creative process behind the poem that matters most to her. | Lit Hub Craft

• “An elegy to German culture, a death mask in sound.” Jeremy Eichler on art, music, and the humanist spirit in the face of Nazi atrocities. | Lit Hub History

• What Marabou storks can teach us about thriving during apocalypse. | Lit Hub

• Alice Sparberg Alexiou recounts her odyssey in search of a long-lost relative. | Lit Hub Memoir

• On the lifesaving potential of (forged) Latin American passports in the Warsaw ghetto. | Lit Hub History

• “You can burn books, put their authors in prison, ban them or confiscate them. But tearing pages out is a punishment so nasty no one’s thought of it yet.” Ahmed Naji on the power of a prison library. | The Washington Post

• A brief history of book theft. | JSTOR Daily

• The best depictions of indecision in literature, from Hamlet to Waiting for Godot. | The Guardian

• “Most of his evaluations on his trip are superficial or banal or laughably snotty. What intrigues is how quickly he demands that things make sense.” Vivian Gornick on Camus’s begrudging book tour. | NYRB

• Some good news: Efforts to ban books are backfiring. | 13WHAM

• “Has the self/ ever been the subject/ of so much propaganda?” A poem by Fady Joudah. | New York Times

Also on Lit Hub: Tracy K. Smith reveals her writing routine • Virginia Pye on the confidence it takes to write • Read from Elaine Feeney’s latest novel, How to Build a Boat