Lit Hub Daily: June 12, 2026
Article excerpt
Bookstores are experiencing a paradoxical boom even as literacy rates decline, with retailers filling a social void that extends beyond books themselves. The phenomenon appears driven by bookstores' role as community gathering spaces rather than purely commercial enterprises. Meanwhile, Korean poets are collaborating with translators to pair poetry collections with K-pop albums, blending high and popular culture in unexpected ways. The pairing represents a broader shift in how literary work is being packaged and consumed alongside contemporary music.
TODAY: In 1929, Anne frank is born, and in 1942 she gets a diary for her birthday.
If literacy is in decline, why are bookstores booming? “Bookstores are filling a social void.” | Lit Hub Bookstores
Korean poets and their translators pair poetry collections with K-pop albums. | Lit Hub On Translation
Did you know the Mayflower Puritans came from a town called Scrooby? | Lit Hub History
From Aristotle to Virgil, ancient writers used bees to examine memory and knowledge. | Lit Hub Criticism
How sitting on the judge’s bench opened Jacqueline St. Joan to a “heightened awareness of language.” | Lit Hub Craft
Deb Olin Unferth’s Earth 7, Andrea Wulf’s The Traveler, and Dave Eggers’ Contrapposto all feature among the best reviewed books of the week. | Book Marks
Claire Fuller explores what writers can learn from sculpting. | Lit Hub Craft
”It’s been seven hours and thirty-five days since he took his love away.” Read “Authority” from Sarah Braunstein’s new collection, Baby in a Box. | Lit Hub Fiction
Matthew Cheney considers the early stories of Clive Barker and Joel Lane in the context of Margaret Thatcher’s England. | Reactor
What is poetry? Jordan Castro searches for the answer to that question in the works of Chelsey Minnis. | The Paris Review
How stories about a lighthouse keeper named Elias Thorne escaped chatbot containment. | 404 Media
Jesse Green chronicles the search for Thornton Wilder’s last play. | The New York Times
Lavinia Spalding tells Cheri Lucas Rowlands about editing the The Best Women’s Travel Writing series: “I think grief turns us more porous, and so everything we experience when we’re traveling, all the unexpected beauty and tenderness that accompanies travel, can feel heightened.” | Longreads
Erik Baker looks at Magnifica humanitas, Pope Leo’s first encyclical, as “an act of position-taking in the debates that have riven Catholicism since the mid-20th century.” | The Nation