The Independent Press Top 40 Bestsellers: Nonfiction: Here are this week’s Independent Press Top 40 Bestsellers for nonfiction, based on sales in hundreds of independent bookstores nationwide, generously provided by the American Booksellers Association. Compiled,… #CraftandCriticism #Features

G’Ra Asim on 99 Problems Finding the 1: Nonfiction writer G’Ra Asim joins co-hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell to talk about his new book, 99 Problems Finding the 1: a love story (sort of). Asim discusses Afropessimism, heteropessimism, and their… #CraftandCriticism #Features

Nick Offerman on the Essential Wisdom of Wendell Berry: This interview was originally published in 2020. Wendell Berry died two days ago at the age of 92. Growing up in the foothills of eastern Kentucky as a compulsive reader and full-time hillbilly, I was… #ClimateChange #CraftandCriticism

What Ann Patchett’s Whistler Gets Right and Wrong About Horses: Popular novels often stumble in telling horse stories. Authors have colts (male) growing up to become mares (female); regional riders competing in red (national) coats; horses at a lope (slow) winning… #CraftandCriticism #Features

Abdelrahman ElGendy on Writing From Inside a Prison Cell: On his third night in detention in Cairo, crammed with sixty other prisoners into a four-by-five meter cell, Abdelrahman ElGendy heard the song for the first time. Belly full after being starved for three… #CraftandAdvice #CraftandCriticism

7 Books About Writerly Rivalry: I’m fascinated by relationships between writers and always have been. They are often at turns intimate, competitive, toxic, and gratifying. Just as their own fictions bend and weave tales, so too do their own lives and rivalries. I am… #CraftandCriticism #Features

Generosity and Personhood: How the Myth of the Three Graces Inspired My Debut Novel: When I walked toward the Roman statue of the Three Graces in The Metropolitan Museum of Art last month, my eyes began to water. I clocked the familiar details in person for the… #CraftandAdvice #CraftandCriticism

Isaac Chotiner on Deep Knowledge and Gotcha Interviews: Welcome to season four of The Critic and Her Publics: The Art of the Interview. This season, host Merve Emre talks with professional interviewers of all kinds about how they get the answer they’re looking… #CraftandAdvice #CraftandCriticism

Antiuniverses, Deepfakes, and Clone Children: September’s Best Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books: September is my birthday month, so this latest crop of sci-fi, fantasy, and speculative books feel especially like presents for me, but also for you! Fantasy heists, magical spy… #CraftandCriticism #Features

10 Great New Children’s Books Out in September 2026: The start of every school year feels full—too full—of haircuts and back-to-school nights, last-minute trips to the store for sneakers that aren’t a size too small, and last-gasp-of-summer ice cream cones. My kids are… #CraftandCriticism #Features

Motherships, Haunted Mirrors, and Heritances: September Poetry Releases: Readers, this month in publishing is lousy with poets, including terrific poets who I didn’t have space for and poets who I made space for but who deserve more than a few hundred words… #CraftandCriticism #Features

Marlon James, Chloe Benjamin, Emily Wilson, and more: 21 new books out today!: September 1st marks, emotionally at least, the beginning of fall. And with it comes that reliable onslaught of literature for which we have been waiting all year. The month starts… #CraftandCriticism #LiteraryCriticism

Marlon James on (Finally) Writing a Novel That Draws From His Life: Says a narrator in Marlon James’s freshly Booker-nominated The Disappearers, “I’ve made such a terrible mess out of being a homo.” The novel’s protagonists are all gay men in ‘80s and ‘90s Jamaica;… #CraftandCriticism #Features

Fun, Feminine and Fundamental: In Defense of Frivolity: It will be the Year of Perfect Skin, I told myself. I had arrived at my mid-forties, and the mirror suddenly gave me a face crosshatched with creases. I was Portrait of a Woman Aging. I was a cubist composition, #CraftandCriticism #Features

What Does Beatlemania Have to Teach Us About Pop Culture Today?: This conversation between two authors who happen to share the same name: BBC and Channel 4 broadcaster Samira Ahmed, whose A Hard Day’s Night in Bloomsbury’s BFI Film Classics series just released this… #CraftandCriticism #Features

Adam Johnson, Muriel Spark, bardic rivalry… and 25 more books out in paperback this September.: September is here, and with it comes a bevy of new books. Below, you’ll find twenty-five delightful reads to consider, each in a fresh paperback edition, including… #CraftandCriticism #LiteraryCriticism

The Latest Literary Scam: Emailing the Long-Dead Giants of 20th-Century Literature: In these first few years of the AI era, tens of thousands of published writers have received emails that begin something like this: “Dear Fred, “I’ve long admired your novels, but feel… #CraftandCriticism #Features

Eight Simple Rules for Dating Your Historical Fiction: This first appeared in Lit Hub’s Craft of Writing newsletter—sign up here. Consider these opening lines. Their source is far from obscure, so there’s a good chance you’ll recognize them right away. Take a… #CraftandAdvice #CraftandCriticism

August’s Best Reviewed Nonfiction: Claire Stapleton’s Don’t Be Evil, Kimon de Greef’s The Ego Trip, and Dave Ziren’s The People’s Historian all feature among the best reviewed nonfiction titles of the month. Brought to you by Book Marks, Lit Hub’s home for book… #CraftandCriticism #Features

August’s Best Reviewed Fiction: Chang-Rae Lee’s A Tender Age, Téa Obreht’s Sunrise, and Paul Yoon’s Etna all feature among the best reviewed fiction titles of the month. Brought to you by Book Marks, Lit Hub’s home for book reviews. * 1. A Tender Age by Chang Rae-Lee #CraftandCriticism #Features