Lit Hub Daily: June 16, 2026
Article excerpt
Literary Hub's daily digest features Sophie Lewis on heterofatalism, the cultural fatalism around heterosexual relationships, alongside pieces on astronaut interview preparation and Erin Maglaque's memoir about childbirth. The collection spans philosophy, memoir, and practical career advice, threading together essays on contemporary relationships, professional aspiration, and bodily experience.
TODAY: 1816, At the Villa Diodati, Lord Byron reads Fantasmagoriana to Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley, Claire Clairmont, and John Polidori, then challenges each guest to write a ghost story, culminating in Mary Shelley writing the novel Frankenstein, John Polidori writing the short story “The Vampyre,” and Byron writing the poem “Darkness.”
Sophie Lewis examines the phenomenon of heterofatalism. | Lit Hub Politics
If you want a job as an astronaut, you need to nail the interview. | Lit Hub Memoir
Erin Maglaque contextualizes her own experience of giving birth through the history of midwifery. | Lit Hub History
“The most wonderful thing about attending someone else’s wedding is that it’s not my own.” On finding inspiration in someone else’s nuptials. | Lit Hub Craft
The 20 new books out today include titles by Amitav Ghosh, Joyce Carol Oates, Isabel Waidner, and more. | Lit Hub Reading Lists
How a family’s history of struggle and survival in Jamaica reveals centuries of Black exclusion in healthcare. | Lit Hub Health
Lynda Schuster chronicles anti-apartheid resistance in 1970s South Africa. | Lit Hub History
Greg Sarris, author of The Last Human Bear, talks to Jane Ciabattari about telling the stories of California’s indigenous communities. | Lit Hub In Conversation
“Picture this: an imposing, three-storey mansion on Calcutta’s tree-lined upscale Southern Avenue.” Read from Amitav Ghosh’s new novel, Ghost-Eye. | Lit Hub Fiction
“Time restarted, at least for Pym’s career as novelist, literally overnight.” On Barbara Pym’s The Sweet Dove Died. | Los Angeles Review of Books
Amy Goodman talks to John Nichols about the purpose of journalism and threats to freedom of the press. | The Nation
“The whole lesbian world was around poets.” Lakshmi Rivera Amin interviews Sarah Schulman. | Hyperallergic
A literary and philosophical look at being a garbage collector. | Harper’s
Laura Seymour searches for signs of neurodivergence in early modern literature. | The Conversation