Astrofiction: Seven Novels With Astronaut Protagonists: Astronauts are well-represented in popular culture. From songs like David Bowie’s A Space Oddity and Elton John’s Rocketman, to films such as 2001: A Space Odyssey (concurrently developed alongside Arthur C.… #CraftandCriticism #Features
Louise Erdich, Han Kang, David Streitfeld, and more: 20 new books out today!: Officially: it is spring. Does that mean we can finally put our winter coats and scarves away? Time will tell. Until then, until we know for sure the snow has gone for good, let’s… #CraftandCriticism #LiteraryCriticism
On the Complexities of Navigating Indigenous Life in a Relentlessly Modern World: Over the past twenty years, Indigenous issues have gone mainstream. Land acknowledgments, protest movements, scholarly conversations, the UN themed decade, and the Indigenous… #CraftandAdvice #CraftandCriticism
Marlene Zuk on Tackling Writer’s Block (as a Scientist): This first appeared in Lit Hub’s Craft of Writing newsletter—sign up here. In 1954, Florence Moog, a biology professor at Washington University in St. Louis, published a paper in the prestigious journal… #CraftandAdvice #CraftandCriticism
How Andrei Tarkovsky Taught Me to Write About the American West: In 1983, Telluride Film Festival co-founder Tom Luddy took Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky on a road trip. Tarkovsky’s film Nostalghia was going to screen at the event. They drove from Luddy’s… #CraftandAdvice #CraftandCriticism
Pepper Basham on How The Secret Garden Inspired Her Love for British Literature: The world was not necessarily a small place for me as a child, but it was consistent. Big Sunday lunches with cousins playing in the nearby creek together, a small elementary school that… #CraftandCriticism #Features
Mieko Kawakami on Sisterhood, Survival, and Finding Hope in the Darkness: One of Japan’s most acclaimed contemporary writers, Mieko Kawakami was launched into literary stardom in 2007, when she won the Akutagawa Prize, Japan’s prestigious award for emerging… #CraftandAdvice #CraftandCriticism
Andrea Mara on Building Suspense: First Draft: A Dialogue of Writing is a weekly show featuring in-depth interviews with fiction, nonfiction, essay writers, and poets, highlighting the voices of writers as they discuss their work, their craft, and the literary… #CraftandAdvice #CraftandCriticism
Rachel Eliza Griffiths on Finding the Poetry in Grief: Memoir Nation: Weekly Inspiration for Writers is an extension of the Memoir Nation community hosted by Brooke Warner and Grant Faulkner, two friends and colleagues who bring a community-minded sensibility to… #CraftandAdvice #CraftandCriticism
Valeria Luiselli on Sounding the Borderlands: This is Thresholds, a series of conversations with writers about experiences that completely turned them upside down, disoriented them in their lives, changed them, and changed how and why they wanted to write. Hosted… #CraftandAdvice #CraftandCriticism
If You Want to Understand the Enduring Appeal of Wuthering Heights, Read This Book: There is a meme circling online asking whether you’re an Emily Brontë or a Charlotte Brontë person. Every thirteen-year-old girl must decide, according to the post, with the… #CraftandCriticism #FullwidthSlider
What Should You Read Next? Here Are the Best Reviewed Books of the Week: Hannah Lillith Assadi’s Paradiso 17, Tara Menon’s Under Water, and Ian Baruma’s Stay Alive: Berlin, 1939-1945 all feature among the best reviewed books of the week. Brought to you by Book Marks,… #CraftandCriticism #Features
A Singular Pursuit: Why All Writing (and All Writers) Matter More Than Ever Today: In February of 2015, the novelist and short-story writer Ryan Boudinot wrote an essay for Seattle news website The Stranger titled, “Things I Can Say About MFA Writing Programs Now… #CraftandAdvice #CraftandCriticism
The Five Best Celebrity/Normal Person Romance Novels to Read: “Who is your celebrity crush?” is a wonderful question to get to know someone: you just know someone by learning which out-of-reach celebrity holds their imagination. Romance novels where celebrities and lay… #CraftandCriticism #Features
Janine Kovac on Getting Into Writing Residencies and Book Festivals: Memoir Nation: Weekly Inspiration for Writers is an extension of the Memoir Nation community hosted by Brooke Warner and Grant Faulkner, two friends and colleagues who bring a community-minded… #CraftandAdvice #CraftandCriticism
Jeff Boyd on Cops, Teachers, and Chicago: Novelist Jeff Boyd joins co-hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell to talk about his new work of literary crime fiction, Hard Times, which is set in Chicago, where he lived previously. The hosts ask about the influence… #CraftandCriticism #Features
Enchantment is Possible: The Cosmic Library explores massive books in order to explore everything else. Here, books that can seem overwhelming—books of dreams, infinity, mysteries—turn out to be intensely accessible, offering so many different ways to read them and… #CraftandCriticism #Features
From Glasnost to Silence: The Collapse of Literary Freedom in Russia: In 1985, when a relatively young party functionary Mikhail Gorbachev became the leader of the Soviet Union, a new era began. Gorbachev started reforms that eventually led to the dissolution of the… #CraftandCriticism #Features
When the Fountain Runs Dry: On Aging, Immortality and the Illusion of Everlasting Youth: I am 11 years old in Brooklyn, sitting in my classroom—the dark one on the first floor—with a group of classmates who have clashed all year long. Friendships fraying, puberty… #CraftandAdvice #CraftandCriticism
Love Stories, Feminism, and Why Cemeteries Are Sexy: The first time I visited Green River Cemetery in East Hampton, New York, I had already read Ann Rower’s wonderful book Lee and Elaine. I was prepared to see the resting places of Elaine de Kooning, Frank… #CraftandAdvice #CraftandCriticism
What Wayne Koestenbaum Learned From Gilligan’s Island (And Why He Will Never Finish Reading Marx’s Capital): Wayne Koestenbaum’s new novel, My Lover, the Rabbi, is out now from FSG, so we asked him a few questions about writing, reading, and whatever else was on… #CraftandAdvice #CraftandCriticism
Ibram X. Kendi, Asako Yuzuki, Anne Lamott, and more: 20 new books out today!: It’s the last week of a relentless winter, God willing. One more 30-degree day on the horizon, but who’s counting? Let’s count the books instead: there’s a great new cascade of… #CraftandCriticism #LiteraryCriticism
Crying in the Multiverse: On the Potential of Possibility as a Literary Device: When my mother died of cancer in 2023, the grief turned my mind into a speculative machine. For some time, I kept wondering about what choices we could have made differently for her… #CraftandAdvice #CraftandCriticism
Philip Schultz on Unavoidable Mortality: First Draft: A Dialogue of Writing is a weekly show featuring in-depth interviews with fiction, nonfiction, essay writers, and poets, highlighting the voices of writers as they discuss their work, their craft, and the… #CraftandAdvice #CraftandCriticism
Is This the Most Literary Video Game of All Time?: The best way I can describe Meredith Gran’s recently released video game Perfect Tides: Station to Station—or at least the best way I can describe it to people who read contemporary literature—is that it feels like a… #CraftandCriticism #Features
Andrew Martin on How to Manage Exposition: This first appeared in Lit Hub’s Craft of Writing newsletter—sign up here. At some point in the last few years, my students became convinced that the worst sin a fiction writer can commit is an “info dump.” Admittedly,… #CraftandAdvice #CraftandCriticism
What Should You Read Next? Here Are the Best Reviewed Books of the Week: Francis Spufford’s Nonesuch, T Kira Madden’s Whidbey, and Tom Junod’s In the Days of My Youth I Was Told What it Means to Be a Man all number among the best reviewed books of the week. Brought to… #CraftandCriticism #Features
Daisy Hernández on the Myth of Citizenship: Award-winning author Daisy Hernández joins co-hosts Jennifer Maritza McCauley and Whitney Terrell to talk about her new book, Citizenship: Notes on an American Myth. Hernández explains the history of the term “citizenship”… #CraftandCriticism #Features
Blood On the Page: On Jane Austen’s Period Drama: Mashing up Jane Austen’s fiction with zombies, erotica, or extraterrestrials has become so common in pop culture that such stuff may no longer raise an eyebrow. Pride & Prejudice & Zombies was, and feels, so very ten… #CraftandCriticism #Features
Five Books About Breaking Up… With Your Friend: Breakup culture is well trodden and established. When you announce to your friends that you are going through a romantic separation, people know what to do. Pints of ice cream and drinks and condolences are offered.… #CraftandAdvice #CraftandCriticism
