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Lit Hub Daily

August 15, 2025

TODAY: In 1894, A. E. Waite starts to publish and edit his occult periodical, The Unknown World.

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This week on the Lit Hub Podcast: Publishers Marketplace 101, Maris Kreizman burns it down, and more! | Lit Hub Radio

“Everybody says they care and want to help. Does anybody really care?” Carole Hinojosa on addiction, motherhood, and advocating for people whose experiences she understands intimately. | Lit Hub Memoir

Orlando Whitfield recounts a tale of friendship, deceit, and the seedy lows of high art. | Lit Hub Art

Olia Hercules remembers the sacred legacies of family, ghosts, and sour cherries in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. | Lit Hub Memoir

THIS WEEK ON THE HUB: Can you match the novelist to their nom de plume? · Read the final message sent by murdered Palestinian journalist Anas al-Sharif · Half of the Polari Book Prize’s longlist have withdrawn in protest of John Boyne’s nomination · Award-winning poet Alice Oswald was arrested for supporting Palestine Action · The Associated Press is ending its regular book coverage · New Hampshire will soon allow parents to see their children’s library checkouts

Peter Orner’s The Gossip Columnist's Daughter, Caleb Gayle’s Black Moses, and Emily Adrian’s Seduction Theory all feature among the best reviewed books of the week. | Book Marks

“Touching grass” isn’t just a comment section cliché—we should all probably go outside. | Lit Hub Nature

Read “Old Song,” a poem by Nima Hasan with translator’s notes by Huda Fakhreddine: “A real poem is never only of the moment. A real poem defeats time, every time.” | Lit Hub Poetry

“Often, readers noted how the novel leaned into the interiority of my characters via other senses...” Yiming Ma explains the benefits of writing blind.| Lit Hub Craft

“Let’s start at the urinal.” Read from David Levithan and Jens Lekman's new novel, Songs for Other People's Weddings. | Lit Hub Fiction

SHEARING FELLOWSHIP IN LAS VEGAS

Black Mountain Institute's Shearing Fellowship is a nine-month working fellowship for emerging and distinguished writers who have published at least one book with a trade or literary press. Free to apply through September 30. Click to learn more.

Learn More

Eighty years after the atomic bomb, Rachel Greenley contemplates narrative, omission, and the ethics of turning life into art. | Orion

“Freedom is neither a fixed idea nor a story of progress toward a predetermined goal.” Eric Foner reflects on his education as a historian. | The Nation

Laura Miller explores how Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny took over TikTok (and the bestseller list). | Slate

On the tragedy of Jumbo the Elephant, Yoko Tawada’s Memoirs of a Polar Bear, and Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil. | The Paris Review

Nolan Kelly watches two cinematic adaptations of Sigrid Nunez novels: “Of course, you have to cast someone.” | Los Angeles Review of Books

People are scrambling to buy 4K Blu-Ray copies of Master and Commander. | 404 Media