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Lit Hub Daily

October 16, 2025

TODAY: In 1758, lexicographer, textbook pioneer, and English-language spelling reformer Noah Webster is born.

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Chris Kraus on researching the the Nagamo Trail Murder and how crime writing can act as an entry to a disconcerted community. | Lit Hub Craft

Titles by Gabrielle Zevin, Kate Atkinson, Matthew Desmond, and more are on Susan Orlean’s TBR. | Lit Hub Criticism

Hot take! You definitely don’t need AI to be good at writing. Kristen Arnett weighs in on this and other literary quandaries. | Lit Hub Advice

“He could not imagine then that I would write in order to find him.” Hester Kaplan looks for her father on Mark Twain’s farm. | Lit Hub Memoir

Sonya Lea chronicles a notorious case of white supremacist violence in Owensboro, Kentucky: “No one cared that the confessions came without counsel.” | Lit Hub History

“What makes his writing distinctive is not its sameness but rather its range and variety.” 5 book reviews you need to read this week. | Book Marks

Caleb Klaces on books that blend text with image and the often-overlooked role of photography in fiction. | Lit Hub Art

“They were desperate. They’d tried in vitro twice. Three adoptions had fallen through.” Read “Babycatcher” from Christian Moody’s story collection, Lost in the Forest of Mechanical Birds. | Lit Hub Fiction

NEW BOOKS FROM GRAYWOLF PRESS

Check out new releases from Graywolf Press, including Algarabía by Roque Raquel Salas Rivera, We’re Alone by Edwidge Danticat, Trigger Warning by Jacinda Townsend, and more.

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ON SALE NOW: A STUNNING DEBUT MEMOIR

This stunning debut memoir of an Iranian girl’s survival through dissociation is on sale now. Use code LOVEBOOKSELLERS for 15% off.

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Kate Wagner on what happens to the humanities when “many elite universities become less about learning and more like tech incubators with a school attached.” | The Nation

Earle Havens discusses a rare books collection that celebrates the history of literary forgeries. | JSTOR Daily

David Trotter on Mrs Dalloway and what Virginia Woolf owes to Jane Austen. | London Review of Books

“Art, and speculation more generally, can commandeer the structures of the sensible, even when these are being actively produced to sustain bordering and racialized repression.” Kalindi Vora considers the border as a technology, and art as a disruptive force. | Public Books

Hilton Als revisits Andy Warhol’s The Philosophy, “a systematic study of existence, values, dread, the universe.” | The Paris Review

Madeline Leung Coleman asks, “Can you become a Susan Orlean without the conditions that created her?” | Vulture