April 13 – 17, 2026

THE BEST OF THE LITERARY INTERNET

• Rosa Campbell on how men responded to The Hite Report (and why we’re wrong about men and feminism). | Lit Hub Politics
• “For farmers, it costs real dollars—and not just rivers of sweat and tears—to care for what they love: the land, their animals, their families.” Jennifer Acker on writing rural life. | Lit Hub Craft
• Polly Barton considers Ryūnosuke Akutagawa’s Hell of Solitude: “The question then is, what does matter? What do we have when we do not have a story?” | Lit Hub Criticism
• It’s getting harder to spot AI in contemporary publishing. And that’s very, very bad. | Lit Hub Technology
• Tim Requarth explores the phenomenon of AI-generated phantom memories. | Longreads
• Rhoda Feng considers modern Antigones. | The Paris Review
• Where does publishing’s AI problem leave authors and readers? “We’re reaching this era of distrust, with no easy way to prove the veracity of your own writing.” | The New York Times
• Matthew Wills considers the significance of Oscar Wilde’s hair evolution. | JSTOR Daily
• “Ondaatje’s whole career has tended toward this condition of late collection, of a memory that lacks a story, and sustains itself only on sensoria and images.” Ben Libman on Michael Ondaatje’s poetry. | Poetry
• Scott W. Stern on Trevor Jackson’s The Insatiable Machine and imagining alternatives to capitalism. | The New Republic
• Hermione Lee considers The Uncollected Letters of Virginia Woolf, and “the astonishing range of connections and commitments that pour through this book and through her life.” | NYRB
• Perry Zurn and Dani S. Bassett imagine the possibilities of a communal curiosity. | The MIT Press Reader
• “These characters don’t exactly ‘die’ when memed, but their innocence does, because that’s the whole point of the meme.” What the internet did to Snoopy. | Dirt
• The similarities (and differences) between two new books that revisit the Bernie Goetz shooting. | The Baffler
• “AI writing tools’ tendency to suck up to their human users has a spillover effect, making the overall tenor of online writing more saccharine.” Kate Knibbs explores a strange side-effect of AI slop. | Wired
• Amelia Soth considers the golden age of the American soapbox. | JSTOR Daily
• “Therapy changed me as a writer. I began noticing patterns in Lewis’s thinking, probably because once a week I was noticing different patterns in my own.” Craig Fehrman on looking for the human side of history. | Defector
• Why is a right-wing press reissuing The Hardy Boys? | NYRB
• “By embracing experimental language and exploring taboo subjects, she had posed a challenge to literary conventions in Turkey, one that still feels urgent and contemporary.”  Kaya Genç on learning to write like Leylâ Erbil. | The Point

Also on Lit Hub:

James K. Chandler revisits Norman Maclean’s A River Runs Through It • Novels of queer domesticity • This week in literary history • Aja Gabel meditates on love and grief • The timelessness of Philip Owens’ Picture of Nobody • The winners of the 2026 O. Henry Prize for Short Fiction • Jhumpa Lahiri and Chiara Barzini discuss interim language • How an animator’s strike led to Disney’s Song of the South • The similarities between knitting and writing • Authors answer our questions about literary life • What Petrarch can teach us about envy • Amazon, Achillia, and other women gladiators • Books on It Girls and celebrity •  Family legacy though the lens of Colombia’s recent history • Learning to write again after incredible tragedy • The inequality of parental labor • Stephanie Sy-Quia on writing about her grandparents • How Parks and Recreation visualized a better America •  The impact of scholasticide on a young generation of Palestinians • 5 book reviews you need to read this week • Independent Press Top 40 Bestsellers for fiction and nonfiction • Suchitra Ramachandran on translating The Abyss • Was Rasputin a fraud? • Luke Goebel on writing dangerously • The Catholic father of oral contraception • The best reviewed books of the week • Rachel Khong’s TBR • Leise Hook on her American and Chinese names • An exercise for getting unstuck