Lit Hub Weekly: May 11 – 15, 2026

TODAY: In 1717, Voltaire is banished from Paris and sent to the Bastille.

• “The waxing and waning fortunes of languages are inevitably historical and political questions, and these questions are likewise delirium-inducing if we sit with them honestly.” The benefits of being a polyglot (as a fiction writer). | Lit Hub Craft
• Dear Hollywood: please stop hot-washing your literary adaptations. | Lit Hub Film
• Is bartering a better system? On the relationship between money and things. | Lit Hub Politics
• Lerone Martin chronicles the day a teenage Martin Luther King Jr. confronted Jim Crow by rail. | Lit Hub History
• “I realized that I felt more comfortable at the range than I did at literary events, where my reputation was premised on the revelation of my crimes, like a confessional.” Reginald Dwayne Betts on finding solace at a gun range. | The New York Times Magazine
• Katharine K. Wilkinson considers what it means to feel at home in a changing world. | Orion
• John J. Lennon remembers a mother-son relationship marked by two different kinds of prisons. | Esquire
• Joachim Trier, Ocean Vuong, and the appeal of the (former) skateboarder. | Dirt
• “And yet the truth remains: We read poetry for the glimmer of a human presence, even if the writer has been hell-bent (as many of the writers I love were) on hiding that presence from us.” On teaching poetry in the age of AI. | The Nation
• What too many readers missed in Gisèle Pelicot’s memoir. | The New York Times
• Russian photographer Alexandra Kuzyk has been sentenced to 18 months in a labor camp for publishing gay K-Pop fanfic. | The Cut
• For screenwriters, training AI “is the new waiting tables.” | Wired
• Ayşegül Savaş remembers finding writing during a moment of aimlessness. | Granta
• Hanif Abdurraqib explores the pleasures of loving a hapless team (in his case, the Timberwolves). | The New Yorker
• Becca Rothfeld examines the banal horror and “performance of normality” in the works of Marlen Haushofer. | London Review of Books
• Corinne Leong considers Rachel Khong’s My Dear You: Stories and the future of Asian American literature. | The Baffler
• Lindsey Adler profiles Amy Wallace, David Foster Wallace’s sister: “Scrutiny around David’s upbringing is inevitably scrutiny of her own upbringing, though hardly any of those critics care to understand her experience—or even know she exists.” | The Small Bow
• Why chatbot-composed verse still has the “tics of contemporary mediocre poetry.” | The Nation
• Kyle Chayka digs into the recent proliferation of community newsletters. | The New Yorker

Also on Lit Hub:

Lilian Pizzichini searches for the most literary Elsa Schiaparelli dress • What the Kardashians have in common with the WWE • The literary islands that inspired Christiana Spens • When Witold Gombrowicz went to Buenos Aires • This week in literary history, Mrs Dalloway is first published • On the relationship between writer and reader • The language of weather • Lori Carlson-Hijuelos honors the legacy of her late husband • How members of the Brontë family confronted the loss of their brother • The history of relations between managers and workers • On researching mental hospitals and starting a book with the action • Authors answer our questions about writerly life • William Kentridge chronicles a personal history of making art •  On Primo Levi’s translation of Kafka after Auschwitz • Lucy Sante recommends books about memory • When librarians and archivists fought over the Declaration of Independence • How to separate truth from illusion while writing the biography • Lessons we need to learn from the Pacific Palisades fires • Why dopamine doesn’t do what you think it does • John Adams and Thomas Jefferson made unlikely friends • Lessons in living in the Anthropocene • The larger-than-life, 17th-century couple who would make great reality TV • Robert K. Brigham remembers searching for his dad • Stine An’s TBR • This week’s Independent Press Top 40 Bestsellers for fiction and nonfiction • 5 book reviews you need to read this week • Fazlur Rahman recommends medical memoirs • Max Pearl gets to know Stacey Levine, author of Pulitzer Prize finalist, Mice 1961 • Adrian McKinty reads Dan Simmons’s take on The Canterbury Tales • Prompts to help you write something you can’t measure • Cassidy Gard explains why she wouldn’t let Montana bring her down • Who’s to blame for the rise of the yuppie? • The best reviewed books of the week • Ailsa Ross recommends books for insomniacs • Family history, personal experience, and writing a memoir • How chronic illness changed Chet’la Sebree’s literary life