I devour myself in delicious painlessness. A lake of blood clots around me. All my short life, I’ve defied biology with my flesh. Now, I defy biology with my death. The eye fixed on me, binding me …
Helen Benedict’s 2009 nonfiction book, The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq, revealed not only what it was like to be a woman at war, but the abusive treatment of women who …
Mary Kay was off to a bad start. She was averaging only $7 a party—and those parties were few and far between. It didn’t look like she would last any longer with Stanley Home Products than she had …
For Sol, Freud’s best books, The Interpretation of Dreams and The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, read like fast-paced detective novels. Why did I forget the name of that town? Why did I just cal…
Family estrangement is a touchy topic, currently prominent in the zeitgeist. Celebrity family rifts are splattered across headlines daily; op-eds have labeled estrangement an “epidemic” and a “cris…
In 1952, literary agent Scott Meredith did the unthinkable: he sent the same manuscript to ten publishers at the same time, and single-handedly invented the book auction. At least, that’s how Mered…
The 1850s have been called the American Renaissance, the decade when distinctive new voices emerged in prose and poetry. The great works were remarkably concentrated: from The Scarlet Letter (1850)…
Meet Scott Meredith, the literary agent who invented the book auction. | Lit Hub History Emerson, Hawthorne, Melville, and the American prose and poetry renaissance of the 1850s. | Lit Hub Criticis…
This April marks the 30th iteration of National Poetry Month, which was launched by the Academy of American Poets in April 1996. To celebrate, the Literary Hub staff will be recommending one great …
This week, the New York Public Library announced its fresh class of Cullman fellows. The 15 gifted academics and writers were selected from a pool of over 800 applicants. They represent half a doze…
This April marks the 30th iteration of National Poetry Month, which was launched by the Academy of American Poets in April 1996. To celebrate, the Literary Hub staff will be recommending one great poem to read every (work) day of
We’ve turned a corner in our seasons, in warmth, in attitude, in literature. It’s a great time for fiction lovers, as we welcome in a new Ben Lerner, Emma Straub, and Rachel Khong all in one day. Lest we forget
Concerning the Flaming-Fucking-Fury, a Foreshadowing of Something Yet to Come In a market square with church towers rising high above the roofs of magnificent houses and a huge, ornately decorated town hall, people were strolling about, dressed in…
Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s new poetry collection, Night Owl, extends her project of meditating on the remarkable facets of nature. Over four sections (“crepuscule,” “sunset,” “midnight,” “the darkest hour is just before the dawn”), she employs a range of…
In 2002, a friend asked if I would join him for a San Francisco Symphony concert with David Robinson as guest conductor. They were to play Olivier Messiaen’s Turangalîla Symphonie. I was a bit ambivalent. I knew Messiaen’s work, but
There are two kinds of writers—I learned implicitly in graduate school—the kind who repeats themselves over and over, in form, subject, or even beginnings or endings, and the kind who, miraculously to me, does not. I’ve heard the theory that
High above this snowy field we spot a shadow hovering. When I turn to you and ask, What is it: a vulture or a hawk? your hand drops mine to shade your narrowed eyes from the brilliant winter light. Let
I (bravely!) consider myself a pioneer in tradwife studies. When I first started feeling inexplicably drawn to Ballerina Farm content, for example, Hannah Neeleman had roughly 150,000 followers.…
When I was 16 years old, my beloved college counselor told me that it was a good thing I wanted to be a physicist because I wasn’t much of a writer. We were close—I had her home phone number for
On physics, poetry, and how humans “are producing our reality through the stories we choose to tell and the metaphors that we use to narrate them.” | Lit Hub Criticism Caro Claire Burke, the author of Yesteryear, talks to Sara
