Lit Hub Weekly: October 5 – 9, 2026

TODAY: In 1870, Ivan Bunin is born.

• Samantha’s all grown up, and American Girl books are entering a new era. | Lit Hub Criticism
• How British media legitimized J.K. Rowling’s transphobia: “We are rendered hostile abstractions in a contradictory narrative: Trans people are not real, only our violence is real.” | Lit Hub Politics
• On the immortality of Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire as it turns 50. | Lit Hub Film
• How much money would Mr. Darcy be worth today? Inger Sigrun Bredkjær Brodey investigates. | Lit Hub History
• Is weird girl lit actually weird? It depends on who you ask. | The New York Times
• Phoenix Alexander explores the “unexpectedly tragic” environmental disaster parallels in Pokémon Pokopia. | Los Angeles Review of Books
• Missing the point of the Heated Rivalry phenomenon, the NHL is releasing audio romance stories starring its players. | Wired
• “There is something uncanny about Scott’s swerve from literary fiction, which she had been writing, into serialized genre fiction, given the history of the ‘everything store’ with which her life and her immense fortune are so intimately bound.” Ronda Feng considers MacKenzie Scott’s serialized novel and the shadow of Amazon. | The New Yorker
• Viviana Freyer explores why, in François Ozon’s adaptation of The Stranger, “Algiers defines—and singles out—Meursault.” | Public Books
• Ken Chen on Dictee at 40: “Rather than reading Dictee as a riddle to be solved, we must look for its pleasures, the foremost of which is love.” | The Yale Review
• “No tests. No judgey ideologies. No ways you ‘have’ to read the book. No ‘right’ way to read it. Free-form reading!” Randy Boyagoda tells the story of the genesis and success of the “Dead Book Club” at the University of Toronto. | Chronicle of Higher Education
• Jessica Traynor wants more out of the “I left big tech” memoir: “Who was all of this tech work meant to serve? In both books, I am at a loss to see what, other than vague ideas of community, was the supposed enlightened aim.” | The Dial
• How does ICANN decide which words become website domains? Why the address for your personal page could soon end in .meow or .fart. | Wired
• “Why isn’t mutual aid and community part of the discussion of what it means to be a writer now?” Daisy Alioto and Kate Zambreno discuss property, privilege, and “the ick of the art monster.” | Dirt
• Editors keep receiving pitches from AI agents (and they’re really persistent). | Vulture
• “School supplies have become unbearably costly, Aya told me. New backpacks used to cost about ten dollars; now they cost forty.” Mosab Abu Toha on going back to school in Gaza. | The New Yorker
• “The certainty that the bottom has already fallen out of reading as a skill seems to be a product less of material facts than of fuzzy, unrepresentative memories.” Osita Nwanevu explains why the rumors of literacy’s death have been greatly exaggerated. | The New Republic
• Jack Hamilton reads the Stephen King book so controversial the author pulled it from publication. | Slate
• The kids probably don’t want AI Pride and Prejudice fan fic, but it’s happening anyway! | Aftermath

Also on Lit Hub:

In the age of AI, the writer’s soul is the only thing that cannot be replicated • The shifting language of Latinx identity • Robin Morgan’s influence on Sylvia Plath’s legacy • Mabel Capability Taylor on Ettie Stettheimer’s Love Days • Nine novels about being the poorest person in the room • Barbara Kingsolver explains why she writes standing up • Lydia Millet talks to Jane Ciabattari about writing her double novel • Kristen Millares Young on motherhood and marriage • What being electrocuted meant for Nafissa Thompson-Spires • Adam Wilson will never write a Yankees fan (and other notes on craft) • A surprisingly intimate visit to Toronto • Read “Sensual Songs for Eight-Year-Olds,” a poem by Patricia Lockwood • Trans poetics and the failure of language • Understanding the far-right through Brazilian politics • The cycle of life and death in Sylvia Plath’s work • Climate activism is a long, slow process • How Russia and its war has destroyed Ukrainian books • Iconic women spies in comics • Why America’s deportation machine is a war • The decades-long friendship between Hannah Arendt and Mary McCarthy • Being an Anishinaabe poet in a fiction writer’s world • This week’s Independent Press Top 40 Bestsellers for fiction and nonfiction • 5 book reviews you need to read this week • When Whitney Houston performed at Super Bowl XXV • The editor’s role in shaping the relationship between the reader and writer • How an army librarian brought literature to World War II’s front lines • Look inside the best dinner at the Frankfurt Book Fair • The complex relationships between queer people and their families • The power of raising the stakes in fiction • How writing and research can help cope with grief and loss • Jean Echenoz and his publisher, Jérôme Lindon • Paralells between Hitler’s electoral victory and the 2026 American midterms • Read Alice Elliott Dark’s new afterword for “In the Gloaming”