• Life in wartime: Aminatta Forna on what fiction can reveal about the fragile fabric of our societies. | Lit Hub

• “Both of my parents had a hard time letting things go.” On book hoarding and the perilous paradox of clutter. | Lit Hub

• Playing the Dozens: Rafi Kohan on the joys and functions of sh*t talk. | Lit Hub

• Collaboration, not competition: How Betty Smith helped her fellow writers. | Lit Hub

• No safe place to grieve: Aisha Abdel Gawad on the danger of talking openly about Palestinian pain. | Lit Hub

• “We know life is finite.Why should we believe death lasts forever?” Read from Anne Michaels’s new novel, Held. | Lit Hub Fiction

• “[T]he writing space, the notebook space is my privacy. And it always has been.” Daisy Alioto and Kate Zambreno in conversation. | Dirt

• An Oregon couple working as chauffeurs were charged with wire fraud and money laundering for allegedly stealing $34 million from Win McCormack, the founder of Tin House Books. | NBC News

• “The tragedies inflicted on the people of East Africa as a result of European rivalries are belittled and forgotten.” Abdulrazak Gurnah on German East Africa. | Granta

• Livia Gershon explores the history of dream interpretation in the Arab world. | JSTOR Daily

• Beyond beauty: Bruce Handy considers four new picture books that “dare to flirt with body negativity, exploring unattractiveness from myriad angles.” | The New York Times

• Danell Jones on what Virginia Woolf’s infamous “Dreadnought Hoax” tells us about ourselves. | Lit Hub History
• It can be very hard to find a book that both you and your child enjoy… Which is why we created the Toddler Tolerability Index. | Lit Hub Parenting
• How witches shifted from daily healers to heretics and dangerous women under Christian rule. | Lit Hub Witches
• Author as illusionist: William Maxwell on literary magic and refusing to give up as a writer. | Lit Hub Craft
• Notes from the Gathering of the Ghosts, a ghostwriting conference. | The New York Times
• Anna Wiener considers the office memoir canon. | The New Yorker
• “Children’s books are not for teaching or moralizing or philosophizing. (That’s what articles about children’s books are for!)” B.J. Novak considers Caps for Sale. | The Paris Review
• “Think of it as a cousin of open-mindedness or a willingness to listen and carefully consider someone else’s truths.” Conversations on the power of intellectual humility. | JSTOR Daily
• Ben Lerner considers Ed Atkins’s Pianowork 2, “a sixteen-minute computer animation that involves an uncannily realistic digital avatar of Atkins playing Jürg Frey’s minimalist piano composition ‘Klavierstück 2.’” | NYRB
• A brief history of the United States’ accents and dialects (with an interactive map!). | Smithsonian Magazine
• “I needed the spectral company that these gifts summoned.” Leslie Jamison on the gifts that helped her survive her divorce. | The New York Times Magazine
• Kiley Reid talks to Rebecca Liu about American racism, education, and “seeing a socioeconomic situation[s] played out in a personal way.”| The Guardian
• Lincoln Michel on the difficulty of reviewing books. | Counter Craft
• “The ancestors that exist in our imaginations may not be entirely made up.” Samia Madwar explores the continued resonance of multigenerational novels. | The Walrus
• Clayton Childress and Dan Sinykin talk publishing in the age of conglomerates. | Public Books
• “By constructing her own mythology, and especially by refusing to let her lover (and readers) in, she makes her own life a work of art.” Victoria Baena considers the afterlives of Proust’s Albertine. | The Yale Review
• Five Palestinian writers living in the US reflect on the state of Palestinian life now. | The Nation
• “For the first time, the public will have the chance to think deeply about the birds we love and come up with new things to call them.” On the changing world of bird names! | Slate
• Inside the Copyright Office, “a small and sleepy office within the Library of Congress,” which is conducting a first-of-its-kind review of copyright law in the age of artificial intelligence. | The New York Times
• Barnes & Noble is planning to open a store in the Hamptons, and the Hamptons are not happy about it. | Curbed

Also on Lit Hub:

Sahar Delijani on the legacies of the Arab Spring • On the slow unraveling of a nation’s suburbs • Ten great new children’s books out in January • Why we all want to become our own boss • Moshe Kasher explores deaf history, language, and education as the hearing child of a deaf adult • Henry Threadgill and Brent Hayes Edwards on the creative process behind music composition • Zachary Pace on the push and pull of working in publishing as a writer • How Nellie Bly wrote creative nonfiction before it was a thing • Megan Hunter on the experience of bringing a novel to the big screen • Laurie Frankel on throwing away half her book while writing it • Of unborn ghosts and ancestral murder: Brian Klaas on trying to celebrate the chaos that led to us • Jennifer Keishin Armstrong in praise of all the literary mean girls • How doctors treated diabetes before insulin therapy: Gary Taubes on the history of diet-based remedies for chronic illness • How Frantz Fanon put theory into practice • A long-lost memoir from a Holocaust survivor • How America’s first Black cinematic vampire subverted stereotypes • Introducing “Am I the Literary Asshole?,” a new column in which Kristen Arnett judges your (bad) bookish behavior

• It can be very hard to find a book that both you and your child enjoy… Which is why we created the Toddler Tolerability Index. | Lit Hub
• Author as illusionist: William Maxwell on literary magic and refusing to give up as a writer. | Lit Hub Craft
• In praise of all the literary mean girls: Jennifer Keishin Armstrong recommends Mona Awad, Kirthana Ramisetti, Anna Bogutskaya, and more. | Lit Hub
• How doctors treated diabetes before insulin therapy: Gary Taubes on the history of diet-based remedies for chronic illness. | Lit Hub Health
• “Self-Portrait as Sister.” A poem by Ae Hee Lee. | Lit Hub Poetry
• The Annotated Nightstand: What Brandi Wells is reading now and next. | Lit Hub
• “Can’t dance. Has no rhythm at all. Used to find it adorable until I saw people laughing at her and hate to say I was embarrassed.” Read from Dolly Alderton’s new novel, Good Material. | Lit Hub Fiction
• Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr!, Adam Shatz’s The Rebel’s Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon, and Elizabeth Gonzalez James’ The Bullet Swallower all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. | Book Marks
• “By constructing her own mythology, and especially by refusing to let her lover (and readers) in, she makes her own life a work of art.” Victoria Baena considers the afterlives of Proust’s Albertine. | The Yale Review
• Five Palestinian writers living in the US reflect on the state of Palestinian life now. | The Nation
• “For the first time, the public will have the chance to think deeply about the birds we love and come up with new things to call them.” On the changing world of bird names! | Slate
• Inside the Copyright Office, “a small and sleepy office within the Library of Congress,” which is conducting a first-of-its-kind review of copyright law in the age of artificial intelligence. | The New York Times
• Barnes & Noble is planning to open a store in the Hamptons, and the Hamptons are not happy about it. | Curbed

• Introducing “Am I the Literary Asshole?,” a new column in which Kristen Arnett judges your (bad) bookish behavior. | Lit Hub
• The revolutionary stranger: How Frantz Fanon put theory into practice. | Lit Hub Politics
• Danell Jones on what Virginia Woolf’s infamous “Dreadnought Hoax” tells us about ourselves. | Lit Hub
• Your annual reminder on how to properly celebrate Burns Night. | Lit Hub
• A long-lost memoir from a Holocaust survivor: read József Debreczeni’s account of a terrifying train ride from Hungary to Auschwitz. | Lit Hub History
• Revisiting Blacula: How America’s first Black cinematic vampire subverted stereotypes. | Lit Hub Film
• “I watch my brother through the small window as he coughs, his body retching with our mother’s disease.” Read from Christina Cooke’s new novel, Broughtupsy | Lit Hub Fiction
• “Think of it as a cousin of open-mindedness or a willingness to listen and carefully consider someone else’s truths.” Conversations on the power of intellectual humility. | JSTOR Daily
• Ben Lerner considers Ed Atkins’s Pianowork 2, “a sixteen-minute computer animation that involves an uncannily realistic digital avatar of Atkins playing Jürg Frey’s minimalist piano composition ‘Klavierstück 2.’” | NYRB
• “I needed the spectral company that these gifts summoned.” Leslie Jamison on the gifts that helped her survive her divorce. | The New York Times Magazine
• Clayton Childress and Dan Sinykin talk publishing in the age of conglomerates. | Public Books
• “Trans writers are living and writing in an era of hypervigilance, of having to fiercely protect ourselves from the world and the state. But in flash nonfiction, we can be sly.” Krys Malcolm Belc on trans flash and taking up space. | Brevity

• “There’s something genuinely life changing about seeing aspects of your imagination take physical form.” Megan Hunter on the experience of bringing a novel to the big screen. | Lit Hub

• The fine art of re(re)vision: Laurie Frankel on throwing away half her book while writing it. | Lit Hub Craft

• Of unborn ghosts and ancestral murder: Brian Klaas on trying to celebrate the chaos that led to us. | Lit Hub

• “Tomorrow or the day after, I’ll / pack my things and off to hell. / Another visit to Palestine.” Read “Holy Land, Wasted,” a poem by Ahmad Almallah and Huda Fakhreddine, after TS Eliot. | Lit Hub

• So fetch, so fierce: Jennifer Keishin Armstrong in praise of all the literary mean girls. | Lit Hub

• How doctors treated diabetes before insulin therapy: Gary Taubes on the history of diet-based remedies for chronic illness. | Lit Hub

• “Sister, for you I’ve made a world within this poem’s mouth…” New poetry by Ae Hee Lee. | Lit Hub

• “The woman searching for her child wakes up in the morning sunburnt and sits up in the sand.” Read from Balsam Karam’s new novel The Singularity, translated by Saskia Vogel. | Lit Hub Fiction

• Today in the darkest timeline: The creator of Libs of TikTok is now an advisor for Oklahoma school libraries. | The Daily Beast

• Notes from the Gathering of the Ghosts, a ghostwriting conference. | The New York Times

• “I thought: I don’t want other people seeing my face—the shame began to rise inside me, from the tips of my fingers to the nape of my neck, like a warm, paralyzing fluid, I recognized its burn.” Read an excerpt from Édouard Louis’ forthcoming book, Change. | The Paris Review
• Margot Robbie and her stylist are releasing a book of her Barbie looks with Rizzoli. | Complex
• Anna Wiener considers the office memoir canon. | The New Yorker

• “It is not easy to fight where your adversary is armed to the teeth, and all you have is the street stretching back behind you.” Sahar Delijani on the legacies of the Arab Spring. | Lit Hub Politics
• Zachary Pace on the push and pull of working in publishing as a writer. | Lit Hub Craft
• Here are 26 great new books out today (something for everyone). | The Hub
• How Nellie Bly and other trailblazing women wrote creative nonfiction before it was a thing. | Lit Hub Criticism
• Manjula Martin talks to Jane Ciabattari about chronicling a world in constant turmoil. | Lit Hub
• White America facing its ghosts: On the slow unraveling of a nation’s suburbs. | Lit Hub
• “David Rizzo knew his son’s resurrection had saved his gun shop.” Read from Alexander Sammartino’s debut novel Last Acts. | Lit Hub Fiction
• “How could a computer render the subtle, yet flamboyant rhetoric of an enslaved Black man speaking to a crowd of wealthy college boys?” Matt Sandler on Cecil Brown’s mission to technologically revive the antebellum poet George Moses Horton. | The Baffler
• On the enduring (and puzzling) influence of the op-ed. | The Millions
• “Though currently on loan to her husband and stepchildren… Dawn is mine, and although we’ve never discussed it, I’m pretty sure I’m hers as well. I know because I can feel it.” David Sedaris on walking and talking with his friend Dawn. | The New Yorker
• A brief history of the United States’ accents and dialects (with an interactive map!). | Smithsonian Magazine
• “The ancestors that exist in our imaginations may not be entirely made up.” Samia Madwar explores the continued resonance of multigenerational novels. | The Walrus

• From board books to middle grade: ten great new children’s books out in January. | Lit Hub
• The cult of the hustle: why we all want to become our own boss. | Lit Hub
• “The decisions of people with zero experience in the deaf world shape the future of the deaf.” Moshe Kasher explores deaf history, language, and education as the hearing child of a deaf adult. | Lit Hub
• How witches shifted from daily healers to heretics and dangerous women under Christian rule. | Lit Hub
• Inspiration plus experimentation: Henry Threadgill and Brent Hayes Edwards on the creative process behind music composition. | Lit Hub
• “The day after Jay committed suicide, Coral had a brunch date with her friends and did not cancel.” Read an excerpt from Venita Blackburn’s Dead in Long Beach, California. | Lit Hub
• “Children’s books are not for teaching or moralizing or philosophizing. (That’s what articles about children’s books are for!)” B.J. Novak considers Caps for Sale. | The Paris Review
• Masha Gessen on Lev Rubinstein, Russian poet and essayist, who died last week at 76. | The New Yorker
• “For generations, through wars, crisis, and political upheaval, documentary poets have helped make sense of some of our most difficult moments.” In partnership with the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, Docupoetry explores what documentary poets are writing about today. | To the Best of Our Knowledge
• Kiley Reid talks to Rebecca Liu about American racism, education, and “seeing a socioeconomic situation[s] played out in a personal way.”| The Guardian
• Lincoln Michel on the difficulty of reviewing books. | Counter Craft

• “The Origins of Totalitarianism reads like a good novel because it reveals to the reader some experience that they already know, but thanks to its pages can now understand.” Why we should all be reading Hannah Arendt. | Lit Hub Politics
• Lightning and land ablaze: Manjula Martin on the primal terror of living in wildfire country. | Lit Hub Nature
• Why nonfiction writers should try writing fiction(and vice versa). | Lit Hub Craft and Criticism
• Motherhood and the Moon: Rebecca Boyle finds solace in lunar metaphysics. | Lit Hub Space!
• “When I realized that the power brokers did not care about my book or middle-aged me, I was free. Not to care. To do exactly as I pleased. Because I was mid.” Viet Thanh Nguyen on embracing mid-life. | Esquire
• Leslie Jamison reflects on the experience of becoming a mother, and of the unraveling of her marriage during her daughter’s first year of life. | The New Yorker
• A dispatch from the 24-hour marathon Moby-Dick reading at the New Bedford Whaling Museum. | Slate
• “That the natural world could have an existence of its own, without our intervention, perspective, or even notice, that we ourselves might not be the central players in the drama of life—what could cause more existential dread?” Colin Dickey on the eerieness of lake monsters. | Atlas Obscura
• Tiya Miles considers Octavia Butler’s “histofuturism.” | The Atlantic
• Juliette Pavy on the cruel birth control campaign Denmark carried out against Inuit women in Greenland. | The Dial
• “I have only recently been made aware of Oliver’s work, but I feel that her thinking somehow influenced mine.” Tayari Jones on the stories of Diane Oliver. | The Paris Review
• Three months into a “livestreamed genocide,” Sarah Aziza considers the limits of bearing witness. | Jewish Currents
• “We don’t have access to essential truths about each other; and this question of equality is always a problem of belief.” Lillian Fishman explores the question of equality in love. | The Point
• Jael Goldfine considers the slow death of feminist media. | Study Hall
• “The multiverse, in its most basic sense, is about our perpetual unhappiness.” Jonathan Russell Clark on falling out of love with the multiverse. | Esquire
• Kelly Boutsalis explores her relationship to land acknowledgements, and to the land. | Hazlitt
• “Great literature, like lifting, makes a claim on one’s life that one has to contend with. Raskolnikov, put another way, could have benefitted from ‘Can’t Get Big Biceps? Just Do THIS!!’” Jordan Castro on getting the pump. | Harper’s
• Two iconic LA bookstores—Vroman’s and Book Soup—are up for sale. | Los Angeles Times
• Moira Donegan on the life and death of 19th-century New York abortion provider Madame Resell. | The New Yorker

Also on Lit Hub:

Maris Kreizman wonders why this coming March is the best month in years for new books  • Temim Fruchter on conquering self-doubt through writing fiction • Tara Isabella Burton  on Fictional characters in search of utopias • Andrew J. Graff on becoming a guide on one of America’s most dangerous rivers • How a 20th-century Czech play influences our understanding of science and humanity • Annie Liontas on life after concussion • How Eric Schlich channels his bisexuality through queer protagonists  • Susan Muaddi Darraj on finding inspiration in the lives of ordinary Palestinians • On the challenges of managing an open relationship • The music of other tongues: Mira Rosenthal and Tomasz Różycki on translating rhyme and rhythm in poetry  • Jacquline Alnes looks into the fringe fruit craze  • How radio brought the world (and a little entertainment) into American homes • The Philips—Pullman and Goff—talk about the deeper meaning (or lack thereof) of the universe with Nigel Warburton • On the outsize influence of economic theory • On fiction as a mode of inquiry • Jami Attenberg on writing a book 1,000 words at a time

• “Every generation absorbs a world view they can’t see beyond.” The Philips—Pullman and Goff—talk about the deeper meaning (or lack thereof) of the universe with Nigel Warburton. | Lit Hub
• “It’s hard to imagine a group of businessmen aggressively lobbying against the physics curriculum at MIT.” On the outsize influence of economic theory. | Lit Hub Politics
• On fiction as a mode of inquiry: Mary Lane Potter considers stories by Clarice Lispector, Kevin McIlvoy, and Alva Noë. | Lit Hub Criticism
• Jami Attenberg on writing a book 1,000 words at a time. | Lit Hub Craft
• “The Houses of Your Village Have Eyes.” A Poem by Irma Pineda, in three languages: English, Spanish, and Zapotec. | Lit Hub Poetry
• “Poor Deer has tucked herself miserably back in her dim corner of room 127.” Read from Clare Oshetsky’s novel, Poor Deer. | Lit Hub Fiction
• Marie-Helene Bertino’s Beautyland, Susan Muaddi Darraj’s Behind You Is the Sea, and Rebecca Boyle’s Our Moon all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. | Book Marks
• A tale of two literary icons: Greg Gerke considers Cormac McCarthy and Louise Glück. | Cleveland Review of Books
• “Great literature, like lifting, makes a claim on one’s life that one has to contend with. Raskolnikov, put another way, could have benefitted from ‘Can’t Get Big Biceps? Just Do THIS!!’” Jordan Castro on getting the pump. | Harper’s
• Two iconic LA bookstores—Vroman’s and Book Soup—are up for sale. | Los Angeles Times
• Moira Donegan on the life and death of 19th-century New York abortion provider Madame Resell. | The New Yorker

• Maris Kreizman wonders why this coming March is the best month in years for new books. | Lit Hub
• “I tell myself that the brain injury did not take away a self, rather it revealed many other selves heretofore unknown to me.” Annie Liontas on life after concussion. | Lit Hub
• “The Origins of Totalitarianism reads like a good novel because it reveals to the reader some experience that they already know, but thanks to its pages can now understand.” Why we should all be reading Hannah Arendt. | Lit Hub

• Why I write gay: How Eric Schlich channels his bisexuality through queer protagonists. | Lit Hub

• Susan Muaddi Darraj on finding inspiration in the lives of ordinary Palestinians. | Lit Hub

• Lightning and land ablaze: Manjula Martin on the primal terror of living in wildfire country. | Lit Hub

• “Walter Benjamin stares at the sea and wishes he had something better to do.” Read “Walter Benjamin Stares at the Sea,” a story by C.D. Rose. | Lit Hub Fiction

• “That the natural world could have an existence of its own, without our intervention, perspective, or even notice, that we ourselves might not be the central players in the drama of life—what could cause more existential dread?” Colin Dickey on the eerieness of lake monsters. | Atlas Obscura
• Jael Goldfine considers the slow death of feminist media. | Study Hall
• “You can’t change the laws of physics. You can, however, change the rules of the economic game.” Nick Romeo on Tolstoy’s approach to economics. | The New Yorker
• Kelly Boutsalis explores her relationship to land acknowledgements, and to the land. | Hazlitt
• “I have only recently been made aware of Oliver’s work, but I feel that her thinking somehow influenced mine.” Tayari Jones on the stories of Diane Oliver. | The Paris Review