Lit Hub Weekly: April 7 - 11, 2025

• Viet Thanh Nguyen explains why most American literature is the literature of empire. | Lit Hub Criticism
• Eleanor Lanahan reflects on the literary legacy of The Great Gatsby, her grandfather’s timeless novel, as it turns 100. | Lit Hub Biography
• Sarah Viren and Vauhini Vara discuss voice, tech, and the use of AI in writing. | Lit Hub In Conversation
• Maris Kreizman asks what it means to be a good author when you publish a book. | Lit Hub Craft
• “It starts with universities, because universities are this object of resentment and this kind of weird charisma, negative and positive.” Molly Fischer talks to Wesleyan president Michael Roth about how colleges should respond to Trump’s threats. | The New Yorker
• Denise Lyons explores the role of libraries in disaster preparedness and recovery. | Library Journal
• Skijer Huston considers the freeway novel, and “a literature of ambivalence.” | Los Angeles Review of Books
• Elif Batuman profiles Sayaka Murata: “Instinctively, I grouped Murata with more radical and less nostalgic thinkers: people like Michel Foucault, who showed that so many supposedly biological or universal phenomena—madness, sex, criminality, medicine—are socially constructed.” | The New Yorker
• “If it is helping them, does it matter if a bee knows it is sad?” Emily Polk considers bees and grief. | Emergence Magazine
• What is there to learn from Trump’s Art of… books? John Ganz bravely revisits them to find out. | The Nation
• Stephen Akey remembers working the telephone reference desk at the Brooklyn Public Library. | The Hedgehog Review
• “If any of the politicians who are in support of banning books were to come into the store, we would love it. Because we would love to pile these books into their arms.” Gale Massey interviews Lauren Groff about her new bookstore, The Lynx. | Southern Literary Review
• Amit Baishya and Siddhartha Deb discuss storytelling and “the weird Anthropocene.” | Public Books
• Art Spiegelman remembers Jules Feiffer: “It’s a mongrel art—a mutt!—and every great master of comix must find a new way to use the distinct skills of writing and drawing to create a new way of transforming time into space.” | The Atlantic
• Chris Heath dives into Robert Caro’s abandoned novel (about an intrepid journalist on a busman’s holiday). | Smithsonian Magazine
• Edna Bonhomme considers Zora Neale Hurston’s lost epic, The Life of Herod the Great. | The Nation 
• Gita Jackson looks back at the tweet roundup era of blogging: “Non-fiction writing of all kinds is the same kind of illusion; this is why journalists often push back on the idea of ‘objectivity.’” | Aftermath
• “Whose deviation from the standard is art, and whose is error?” Saudamini Deo on the reception of non-Western literature in the Western literary world. | Words Without Borders
• Daphne Merkin considers Ruth Franklin’s new biography of Anne Frank, and what more there is to learn about the young diarist. | The New Republic

Also on Lit Hub:

Lynn Steger Strong on imaginative truth • Five takeaways from the Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne papers • What Toni Morrison’s fiction taught Bridgett M. Davis about writing memoir • The nuance of creating the perfect book cover • Fate, grief and the slow disintegration of a family in Zimbabwe • Camille Aubray recommends retellings of The Great Gatsby • Literary Hub turns ten years old! • Sally Rooney examines the short stories of Thomas Morris • Katie Kitamura on falling in love with her characters • Kate Folk on her aviation-themed homage to Moby-Dick • On the stray mothers of literature • Andrea Long Chu explains why she loves Dungeons & Dragons • Jane Ciabattari talks to Kate Folk about her novel, Sky Daddy • Authors take the Lit Hub questionnaire • Meredith Hambrock on The Sound of Music in the age of tradwives and Trump • Vaunda Micheaux Nelson reflects on her great-uncle Lewis Michaux’s Harlem bookstore • Priya Vulchi traces iconic literary and political friendships • Bookseller Lucy Kogler on the publishing industry’s waste problem • Daniel Mendelsohn considers the legacy of Homer’s Odyssey •  Read from the graphic adaptation of Paul Auster’s The New York Trilogy • Ariel Courage explores America’s polluted urban ruins • Dinaw Mengestu on PEN America’s commitment to free expression • Viet Thanh Nguyen explores “the joy of otherness” •  Jon Hickey’s TBR includes work by Katie Kitamura and more • 5 book reviews you need to read this week • Moeen Farrokhi on translating literature into Farsi • Uttama Kirit Patel recommends books that explore motherhood and intention • On unraveling a short story into a novel • Kristin Russo and Jenny Owen Youngs on Buffy the Vampire Slayer • The best reviewed books of the week • Writing a book while driving the Sam Houston Tollway • Daryl Gregory remembers his mom