Read the Winners of American Short Fiction’s 2026 Insider Prize: Writing is a challenge, at every level. There are constant pressures acting upon a writer: juggling between responsibilities and work; prioritizing health; making and somehow slowing down time; even,… #BookNews #CraftandCriticism

The Literary Agent Who Lost the Narrative Thread: As a literary agent, I’ve spent years shaping the stories of other people’s grief. There was the Pulitzer-nominated journalist who’d lost her only child when he was seven. And the Black descendent of Thomas… #CraftandAdvice #CraftandCriticism

Adam Erlich Sachs on Heinrich von Kleist’s Michael Kohlhaas: The Windham-Campbell Prizes Podcast features a series of conversations with past and present Windham-Campbell Prize winners about their favorite books and plays. Hosted by Michael Kelleher. For the… #CraftandAdvice #CraftandCriticism

34 Books You Need to Read This Fall: The weather has become untrustworthy, for determining the seasons and otherwise. As I write this introduction, the leaves remain stubbornly green, and outside my window there is torrential rain. But at the farmer’s market… #CraftandCriticism #FullwidthSlider

Emma Cline, R.F. Kuang, Alice Hoffman, and more: 20 new books out today!: There’s a rule in September that every week must include one epically splashy book: this week, Emma Cline’s Switzy is here to fulfill that quota. It’s time for us all to get our hands on… #CraftandCriticism #LiteraryCriticism

Emily Wilson Talks Complicated Men, Celebrating Strangeness, and Why There is Always Another Way to Say It: One of the most celebrated classicists writing today, Emily Wilson achieved a rare kind of literary stardom in 2017, when her translation of Homer’s… #CraftandAdvice #CraftandCriticism

Brian Dillon on What Virginia Woolf’s The Waves Means to Him: In time he will say that The Waves by Virginia Woolf has been the most important novel in his life; but at twenty he does not use the word of this or any book, and would think it pompous, embarrassing, #CraftandCriticism #Features

Anna Silman on Revisiting the Interview: 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 for, what makes a… #CraftandAdvice #CraftandCriticism

How to Get Over the Hump of Writing Sex: This first appeared in Lit Hub’s Craft of Writing newsletter—sign up here. Only trouble is interesting, and what causes more trouble for us humans than our love lives? With love, we’re leaping into the unknown, and it’s… #CraftandAdvice #CraftandCriticism

10 Literary Science Fiction and Fantasy Novels That Offer Hope for the Future: During graduate school, I finished the novel that found me an agent—but when my agent submitted it to publishers, all twenty of them turned the manuscript down. Truthfully, it was closer to… #CraftandCriticism #Features

What Should You Read Next? Here Are the Best Reviewed Books of the Week: Marlon James’ The Disappearers, Jon Ronson’s The Castle, Chloe Benjamin’s Under Story, and Emily Wilson’s Crossing the Wine Dark Sea all feature among the best reviewed books of the month. Brought… #CraftandCriticism #Features

Latin America’s Agrarian Novels Chronicled the Birth of a New World: We begin in medias res, along a path traveled by a landowner. In the opening pages of Rómulo Gallegos’s landmark 1929 novel Doña Bárbara, the novel’s protagonist, Santos Luzardo, travels toward his… #CraftandCriticism #Features

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

The Latest Literary Scam: Emailing the Long-Dead Legends 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

Here’s What to Read Once You Get Through Weird Girl Lit 101: Weird girl lit is having a moment. From TikTok videos to front tables at indie bookshops and in countless newsletters, a group of seemingly ubiquitous novels are being grouped together like ingredients for a… #CraftandCriticism #Features

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