Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Lit Hub @literaryhub.bsky.social · 17h

The Buffalo Federal Detention Facility abruptly stopped accepting book deliveries for detainees in July.

New York’s largest ICE detention camp is blocking book deliveries.

ICE is depraved, and every day they seem to find new ways to lash out. Their incompetence—from out-of-shape squadristi getting embarrassed in Chicago to the poorly written snivelings of racist penc…

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Lit Hub @literaryhub.bsky.social · 19h

You should use these Venns to catch up on the news (especially if you like Moomins).

This week’s news in Venn diagrams.

Fittingly for the news of a new Moomin movie this week, today is Finnish Literature Day. Maybe break out some Tove Jansson, Frans Eemil Sillanpää, or Väinö Linna this weekend to celebrate? Or go al…

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Lit Hub @literaryhub.bsky.social · 21h

Hammer & Hope, Octoberfest, the National Aquarium, and more! These are the things that made us happy this week!

Here’s what’s making us happy this week.

Get in, Lit Hubbers. We’re going…everywhere. The whole staff is skipping into fall with an eye to adventure. We’re picking apples and pumpkins. We’re bringing abroad statesi…

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Lit Hub @literaryhub.bsky.social · 1d

“It’s even colder than I’d expected, a blow that knits my muscles together.” Read from Anbara Salam’s new novel, The Salvage.

The Salvage

It’s even colder than I’d expected, a blow that knits my muscles together. Pushing all my strength into kick kick kick I swim down down, concentrating only on moving. My heart is racing from the sl…

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Lit Hub @literaryhub.bsky.social · 1d

Marta Figlerowicz looks for lessons (and hope!) in the writing of Maria Janion.

Finding Grim Lessons of the 20th Century (and a Little Hope) in the Writing of Maria Janion

I came across Maria Janion’s Uncanny Slavdom on the verge of the 2020 lockdown. The title caught my eye. Sigmund Freud defines the uncanny as the nagging presence of the familiar within the strange…

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Lit Hub @literaryhub.bsky.social · 1d

Thomas Pynchon’s Shadow Ticket, Francesca Wade’s Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife, and John Banville’s Venetian Vespers all feature among the best reviewed books of the week.

The Best Reviewed Books of the Week

Featuring Thomas Pynchon, Gertrude Stein, John Banville, and more

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Lit Hub @literaryhub.bsky.social · 1d

Amid a government shutdown, Robert S. Levine examines why Trump can’t erase the abolitionist history of Harpers Ferry.

Why Donald Trump Wants to Erase John Brown’s Fiery Abolitionist Legacy (and Why He Will Fail)

In the early days of September, at a more gentle time before the government shutdown, President Trump ordered the removal of “corrosive ideology” from all national parks, by which he meant all sign…

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Lit Hub @literaryhub.bsky.social · 1d

What a 1977 Czech writers’ manifesto can teach us about “America’s decades-long drift into authoritarianism.”

How a 1977 Czech Writers’ Manifesto Applies to the Stark Realities of America in 2025

The wonderful Czech writer Ivan Klima died this past weekend at the age of 94. Klima lived a remarkable, principled life, having survived both the Nazi occupation of Prague (he spent three years in…

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Devin 🌞 Thomas O’Shea @devintoshea.bsky.social · 2d

went on the @literaryhub.bsky.social pod to talk Pynch 🧨 with @drewsof.bsky.social 🔥

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t...

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American Literary Translators Association @littranslate.bsky.social · 1d

“Charlotte Mandell had written the English words I was reading, whose power and beauty left me gasping and stunned.”

Bryan Alistair Charles discusses Proust in translation with translator and ALTA member Charlotte Mandell at Lit Hub: @literaryhub.bsky.social

On Translating Proust and the Art of Not Reading Ahead

Le devoir et la tâche d’un écrivain sont ceux d’un traducteur. –Marcel Proust, Le Temps retrouvé * The duty and the task of a writer are those of a translator. –The Past Recaptured, tra…

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Lit Hub @literaryhub.bsky.social · 1d

Hannah Bonner talks to director Nia DaCosta about Hedda, her adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s play: “The desire for power is this animal urge inside us, and if we were more capable to engage in our fallibility because we are animals I think we would probably be in a better place.”

What Hedda Reveals About the Timelessness of Feminine Rage

In Nia DaCosta’s vespertine parlor drama Hedda, an adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s 1890 play Hedda Gabler, Tessa Thompson transfixes in the titular role. The film takes place in 1954 almost exclusivel…

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Jonny Diamond @jonnydiamond.bsky.social · 1d

I wrote about what we can all learn from the courage of Czech dissidents. lithub.com/how-a-1977-c...

How a 1977 Czech Writers’ Manifesto Applies to the Stark Realities of America in 2025

The wonderful Czech writer Ivan Klima died this past weekend at the age of 94. Klima lived a remarkable, principled life, having survived both the Nazi occupation of Prague (he spent three years in…

lithub.com

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Lit Hub @literaryhub.bsky.social · 1d

@gilbertking.bsky.social introduces the case of Leo Schofield, the guitarist accused of murdering his wife Michelle in 1987.

Prelude to a Murder: When Misfits Falls in Love in Deepest Florida

At sixteen years old, Leo Schofield felt like an outcast. He’d grown up in the housing projects of Fall River, Massachusetts, and he had the working-class New England accent to prove it. But as he …

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Lit Hub @literaryhub.bsky.social · 1d

Gilbert King introduces the case of Leo Schofield, the guitarist accused of murdering his wife Michelle in 1987.

Prelude to a Murder: When Misfits Falls in Love in Deepest Florida

At sixteen years old, Leo Schofield felt like an outcast. He’d grown up in the housing projects of Fall River, Massachusetts, and he had the working-class New England accent to prove it. But as he …

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Lit Hub @literaryhub.bsky.social · 1d

This week on the Lit Hub Podcast: Pynchon and oozy horror!

Pynchon and Splatterpunk in America on The Lit Hub Podcast

A weekly behind-the-scenes dive into everything interesting, dynamic, strange, and wonderful happening in literary culture—featuring Lit Hub staff, columnists, and special guests! Hosted by Drew Br…

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Lit Hub @literaryhub.bsky.social · 1d

“Learning how to write badly isn’t learning a new skill; it’s learning how to tell perfectionism that it can no longer control my creative endeavors.” Tawny Lara explains why it’s okay to embrace your trash first drafts.

Tawny Lara on Embracing the Sh*tty First Draft

This first appeared in Lit Hub’s Craft of Writing newsletter—sign up here. It was in the first week of NYU’s creative writing summer intensive that I learned that writing badly was the route to tu…

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Lit Hub @literaryhub.bsky.social · 1d

Robert Bartlett on why it’s a miracle that Beowulf survived the Middle Ages.

How Close Did We Come to Losing Beowulf Forever?

There are cases of important literary and historical works that survive in only one or two manuscripts. If they had suﬀered some accident, then our picture of the past might be altered in important…

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Lit Hub @literaryhub.bsky.social · 1d

Read what is likely the first English language review of László Krasznahorkai, written by @andrewervin.bsky.social in 2001.

Is This the First-Ever English Language Review of László Krasznahorkai?

My love of Hungarian literature began in 1994, when my college girlfriend moved to Budapest to study music at the Liszt Academy and I followed her a few months later. We planned to stay for nine mo…

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Lit Hub @literaryhub.bsky.social · 2d

“If their case was being discussed on a national level, why wasn’t the same thing happening for all the other kidnapped children?” Read from Brenda Lozano’s novel Mothers, translated by Heather Cleary.

Mothers

The little girl’s case became a topic of conversation on the street and in offices and homes. Thanks to their privilege, the Miranda Felipe family had been able to get special treatment from the po…

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Lit Hub @literaryhub.bsky.social · 2d

Read Andrew Ervin’s January 2001 take on The Melancholy of Resistance.

Is This the First-Ever English Language Review of László Krasznahorkai?

My love of Hungarian literature began in 1994, when my college girlfriend moved to Budapest to study music at the Liszt Academy and I followed her a few months later. We planned to stay for nine mo…

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Lit Hub @literaryhub.bsky.social · 2d

“These young people, Gen Z Madagascar, will bring down entire paradigms of thought.” Raharimanana on Madagascar’s revolutions.

The Island of Pirates: Raharimanana on Madagascar’s Revolutions, Past and Present

Translated by Allison M. Charette 2002: Books were burning in front of my father’s house. There was the military. And the militias. Who, by ousting the dictator, were already setting up a new syste…

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Lit Hub @literaryhub.bsky.social · 2d

@maassp.bsky.social unpacks the sensationalist journalism of Richard Harding Davis, America’s first star war reporter.

How America’s First Star War Reporter Set the Tone For a Century of Journalism

Richard Harding Davis is regarded by many as the first war correspondent of modern American journalism—not because he was the first to cover nineteenth-century warfare, but because he attracted a l…

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Lit Hub @literaryhub.bsky.social · 2d

“Its impacts can be seen in multiple ways, from the minuscule size of reservations, often called ‘rancherias,’ to the number of tribes that were terminated in the 1950s and remain federally unrecognized.” On the past and present of violence against Indigenous people in California.

How California’s Legacy of Violence Against Indigenous People Impacts the Present Day

In June 2019, the Los Angeles Times published an exposé revealing that companies had secured over $300 million in government contracts based on wrongful claims to Cherokee heritage since 2000. The …

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Lit Hub @literaryhub.bsky.social · 2d

Is the Left really a threat to free speech when the Right’s on book-banning spree?
@maris.bsky.social sets the record straight.

The Real Threat to Free Speech in America is From the Right, Not the Left—Stop Pretending Otherwise

The road to fascism is paved with false equivalencies. For years we’ve been told that the censorious Left is a serious threat to free speech. If Simon & Schuster cancels one book because the pu…

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Lit Hub @literaryhub.bsky.social · 2d

Pat Lipsky remembers the alliances, rivalries, and New York art world clout at Max’s Kansas City in the 70’s.

A Night at Max’s Kansas City: Seeing and Being Seen in the 1970s NYC Art World

There were two choices for dinner at Max’s Kansas City: lobster or steak. I always ordered steak. My boyfriend favored lobster. He never paid the tab. After a year or so he gave the owner a sculptu…

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