Lit Hub Weekly: May 12 - 16, 2025

• Mark Lynas on what would happen in the first few hours of nuclear war (and how to prevent nuclear war in the first place). | Lit Hub History
• Mark Hussey chronicles how Virginia Woolf began drafting Mrs. Dalloway. | Lit Hub Criticism
• “When I watch her, I feel like I’m witnessing something beyond me, something heavenly and incomprehensible.” Mac Crane praises Chelsea Gray and the poetics of basketball. | Lit Hub Sports
• Leah Litman explains the legal theories weaponized by conservative justices (or, does the Supreme Court just run on vibes now?) | Lit Hub Politics
• “The killing of the NEA feels like the last little bit of the end of American culture, and it’s the last little bit of voices of true resistance. All that’s left is content created for an algorithm that a corporation wrote.” Kaitlyn Greenidge on the tragedy of Trump’s gutting of the NEA. | Harper’s Bazaar
• Jeremiah David reads—and lives—Camping on Low or No Dollars (aka The Guide). | The Paris Review
• “How does Trump perpetuate the faulty logic of IQ tests and tracking? By suggesting that people with disabilities do not belong in the workforce.” Pepper Stetler traces the eugenicist roots of IQ testing. | Los Angeles Review of Books
• Mira Ptacin on teaching writing in prison and the devastating consequences of Trump’s anti-trans policies: “They declared Maine out of compliance with ‘agency priorities’. The punishment: cut funding, and not just any funding, but programs that worked.” | The Guardian
• What even is close reading? Dan Sinykin considers. | The Nation 
• Megan Fritts examines the success (and futility) of establishing guidelines for the use of AI in academia. | The Point
• “Shame on the White House. Shame on those who should be stopping this slide into autocracy and aren’t.” George Saunders responds to Trump’s firing of librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden. | The New York Times
• … and Trump’s attempts at taking over the Library of Congress are even more dangerous than we thought. | Rolling Stone
• John Garrison revisits Percival Everett’s Wounded. | Public Books
• Tessa Hulls on her Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic memoir, Feeding Ghosts. | Seattle Times
• Timothy Aubry returns to the books he loved as “an aspiring intellectual”—also known as “the white male middlebrow canon.” | The Point
• David Richardson, the new acting administrator of FEMA, is also bad at writing novels. | The New Republic
• Kaitlyn Greenidge revisits Erika Kennedy’s prescient hip-hop satire, Bling. | Harper’s Bazaar
• Rosie Stockton and Rachel Kushner converse about unexpected journeys, apocalyptic poetry, and the nature of love. | Interview
• “Some of the trainings were given by explicitly pro-AI organizations and authors, and organizations backed by tech companies.” Schools were never equipped, it turns out, to deal with AI. | 404 Media

Also on Lit Hub:

Trump’s anti-trans policies and the WWII persecution of Japanese Americans • Generational trauma and Russia’s onslaught against Ukraine • David Renton shares lessons on anti-fascism • Writing for The Wonder Years taught Mark B. Perry to write a novel • The allure of writing lost places • Priscilla Gilman talks to Jill Bialosky about her new memoir • Why can’t Trump and JD Vance stop talking about dolls? • Jane Ciabattari interviews Karen E. Bender • The very real dangers of over-hyping AI • Authors take the Lit Hub questionnaire • 10 novels with mind-blowing structures • The virtues of taking a tree-climbing workshop • Anthropocentric ideas in The Anthropocene • The guest editors and covers of the 2025 Best American Series! • On 100 years of Mrs. Dalloway • Why Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld fled the Nazis • Teaching Mrs. Dalloway in the age of AI • 100 Mrs. Dalloway covers for 100 years • The motivations and methods of people who want to live forever • On what draws us to doomsday fantasies • Why logging off and tuning out are essential to the creative process •  Read “Carmet et Error,” a poem by Rosie Stockton • Am I the literary asshole? • On Fu Hao, ancient China’s axe-wielding warrior queen • Monica Macansantos on reuniting with her father through used books • 5 book reviews you need to read this week • Maternal rage and the complexities of release • Ho cultural exchange contributed to the development of language • Ed Simon on grifters and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz at 125 • Why we owe the modern rom-com to Jane Austen • The similarities between being a writer and being a chicken • On translating your own novel back into your mother tongue • A bee learns about the history of the scientists who have studied it •  The best reviewed books of the week • How to build a house on the page • Exploring life inside Earth’s most extreme environments