Lit Hub Weekly: July 6, 10, 2026

TODAY: In 1966, Delmore Schwartz dies.

Lisa Owens explores the “taboo” ways women writers arrange the balance between creativity with family. | Lit Hub Craft

How Jane Austen subverted the kind of romance she mastered by writing Emma. | Lit Hub Biography

How Joyce Carol Oates, queen of the literary internet, examines “the dispiriting effects of technology on contemporary life” in her new collection, The Frenzy. | Lit Hub Criticism

“Osip Mandelstam was denied the right to work for any publication or publishing house; translation jobs were cancelled, his writing went unpublished.” Megan Marshall on the parallel terrors of Stalin and Trump. | Lit Hub History

David E. Nye considers the optical illusion of American progress. | The MIT Press Reader

Jeff Goodwin explores the often erased Marxism of W. E. B. Du Bois. | Jacobin

Keli Dailey rereads Mark Twain as the world burns. | Adi Magazine

How Palestinians are building digital archives in the face of genocide. | Wired

Quinta Jurecic looks into the complete lack of investigation into the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, six months on. | The Atlantic

Rosemary Counter digs into the fascinating, lesser-known details of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s life, from Pa’s precarious finances to prairie serial killers. | Vanity Fair

“While nothing that he writes is of much interest, Nazir himself is shaping up to be an oddly appealing character.” Laura Miller on Jamir Nazir’s defense of his allegedly AI-generated story. | Slate

Stephen Mihm explores the “fateful mid-sermon revelation” that led Melvil Dewey to create the Dewey Decimal System. | Smithsonian Magazine

Why copyright isn’t enough to protect writers from having their work stolen by AI. | The Dial

“We artsy kids had zines, and the right had the direct-mail machinery.” Chris Randle and Isaac Butler discuss censorship, public art funding, and the erosion of the public sector. | Dirt

Olivia Baes discusses why “there is always an oral element” when translating Margurite Duras. | Asymptote

Are you ready for the AI “merge”? Because apparently, it’s already begun. | The Nation

Rachel Aviv talks to Lucy McKeon about the relationships between parents and children and her new book, You Won’t Get Free of It: Stories of Mothers and Daughters. | Broadcast

Abigail Susik explores the pessimism of André Breton. | Los Angeles Review of Books

Hua Hsu traces the past and future of Silicon Valley’s Highway 85: “There were celebrations all along the route that day. I remember walking down the on-ramp and seeing the road extend for miles.” | Places

Also on Lit Hub:

The case for Moby-Dick as the ultimate American novel • Why Plato’s Symposium is actually about love • How medieval scribes wrote as a spiritual practice • On the unexpected gift of sharing a geriatric debut • How Etel Adnan influenced a generation of poets • AI’s slow, steady invasion of literary translation • The poetics of the yodel • Considering Jonestown as a Guyanese-American author • Nine great books about survival at sea • Exploring every street of Santa Cruz County • The freeing power of writing fiction for the first time • Why do local governments struggle with trash? • Swimming as self (re)discovery • The similarities between diving and creativity • Read “Hemlock, 1956,” a poem by Victoria Chang  • Remembering the great Tom Stoppard • The eternal pantomime of Love Island • Why William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair is more relevant than ever • The minority languages in danger of becoming extinct • this week’s Independent Press Top 40 Bestsellers for fiction and nonfiction • Ten reasons you should think about downsizing your book collection • 5 book reviews you need to read this week • How Rachel Aviv fell in love with Revolutionary Road • Read a new poem by Fatimah Asghar • Australia’s snake venom con men • Why was Earth Liberation Front treated like a terrorist group? • Writing lessons learned from Hans Zimmer • On Kathy Leissner, the overlooked first victim of the University of Texas tower shooting • Read  “Boardinghouse With No Visible Address,” a poem by Franz Wright • The best reviewed books of the week