Lit Hub Weekly: August 25 - 29, 2025

• Polly Atkin on nature writing, chronic illness, and the controversy surrounding Raynor Winn’s memoir, The Salt Path. | Lit Hub Memoir
• Richard Siken talks to Poets.org about his new collection, I Do Know Some Things, and the line break as “the most fundamental poetic device.” | Lit Hub In Conversation
• “When I first arrived in Belfast, I saw both Palestinian and Israeli flags, but in different neighborhoods—the Palestinian ones in Irish nationalist areas, and Israeli ones in Protestant loyalist areas.” On Northern Irish solidarity with Palestine. | Lit Hub Politics
• How Jane Bowles’ Two Serious Ladies influenced Sheila Heti to write (and live) sincerely. | Lit Hub Criticism
• “I think it’s important to remember how important Black women were to him.” Kaitlyn Greenidge talks to Nicholas Boggs and Jessica B. Harris about James Baldwin’s lovers and friends. | Harper’s Bazaar
• Jon Allsop proposes the Moomins as “an antidote to the toxicity of much modern internet discourse.” | The New Yorker 
• H.M.A. Leow explores how Western travel writing doubled as propaganda during the Second Sino-Japanese War. | JSTOR Daily
• Sloan Crosley dives into the bewildering world of celebrity children’s books. | The New Yorker 
• “Alice survived in and because of poetry. That, and love.” Nick Sturm remembers Alice Notley. | Poetry
• Is the literary industrial complex worth the cash? On the scam of ‘luxury’ writing retreats. | Slate
• On Betar, Canary Mission, and the practice of doxxing students and faculty who engage in pro-Palestine actions on university campuses. | The Baffler
• “There is a kind of Lockwood lens that brings into focus the improbable and hilariously bizarre features lurking in the midst of ordinary life, which a different writer might prefer to smooth over for realism’s sake.” Alexandra Schwartz profiles Patricia Lockwood. | The New Yorker
• Jonathan Karp is stepping down as the C.E.O. of Simon & Schuster. | The New York Times
• “To remember is to risk punishment”: Sajad Hameed and Rehan Qayoom Mir report on India’s book ban in Kashmir. | Jacobin
• Ahmad Almallah on the poetics of Palestine, American hypocrisy, and writing “between linguistic borderlands.” | Asymptote
• “I’ve since come to think of guilty pleasure only when I think about terrible beauty.” On the entwining legacies of climate change and family history in California. | Nautilus
• “It’s an atrocity recorded live”: Aymann Ismail on the 189 Palestinian journalists that Israel has killed. | Slate
• Joanna Pocock explores America by Greyhound, and considers the “overlooked ecosystem” that includes the buses. | Orion
• Nicholas Quah explores the impossibility of a podcast canon: “The medium is just two decades old, yet whole swaths of its history have already been lost: feeds taken offline, platforms shuttered, files no longer hosted.” | Vulture

Also on Lit Hub:

The horrors of surviving the Flour Massacre in Gaza • How River Selby unexpectedly became a wildland firefighter • Danté Stewart on his new biography of James Baldwin • Genre and gender blurring in Kim de l’Horizon’s Sea, Mothers, Swallow, Tongues • How David Levithan fictionalized Jens Lekman’s side hustle as a wedding singer • Looking to science fiction for the future • What ancient sales receipts say about early forms of writing • Yuki Tejima on translation as an act of sharing • Elaine Hsieh Chou on literary community and the search for space • What literary depictions of reality TV reveal about the ethics of the edit • On the ADL in American classrooms • Jessie Redmon’s forgotten novel, Plum Bun • Peter Mishler talks to poet Sasha Debevec-McKenney • What actually resulted from the Oslo Accords • On the legacy of Eleanor Bumpurs, murdered by the NYPD • Using “a consummate image of my childhood self” as a memoir cover • The cyber soldiers who crush internet dissent in Cuba • Huda Fakhreddine on Paul Celan and the necessity of Gaza to poetry • On the most human of study guides, CliffsNotes • Why books aren’t the solution to building empathy • Kelly Sundberg recommends titles to read for your new life • 5 book reviews you need to read this week • What if all the ice on earth suddenly melted? • Our favorite August book covers • The chilling parallels between genocides in Srebrenica and Gaza • This week on the Lit Hub Podcast • August’s best reviewed books • Stream these literary films and TV shows • Douglas Unger on discovering why you write • The most anticipated audiobooks of September