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Lit Hub Daily

January 14, 2026

TODAY: In 1912, Tillie Olsen is born.

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“‘Can you be a good writer and a good person?’ he muses into his Zoom camera, vaping every few seconds.” Eric Olson profiles Karl Ove Knausgaard. | Lit Hub Criticism

Ed Simon explores the complex relationships between writers and their day jobs. | Lit Hub Craft

How the New York Times failed Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya: “When there was barely any hospital left to defend, and no patients left to treat, Dr. Abu Safiya walked out into the blinding light of the world, heroically facing down an Israeli tank, alone.” | Lit Hub Politics

“‘All poets are liars,’ my play begins. / Plato was probably right. With this enfeebled mind / my only recourse is poetry.” Read “In Shadow, Who Made These Words,” a poem by Bianca Stone from the collection The Near and Distant World. | Lit Hub Poetry

“I learn that the men, regardless of race, had once lived a life of poverty. And crime was seen by each of them as a means of relieving the pain of poverty.” W. Ralph Eubanks explores literary life in the Mississippi Delta’s Parchman Prison. | Lit Hub Craft

Sara Levine recommends books featuring powerful aunts by Jane Austen, P.G. Wodehouse, and Elena Ferrante. | Lit Hub Reading Lists

Judson Bergman explores hedonism, nihilism and redemption via The Weeknd. | Lit Hub Music

Sydney Rende recommends six sad books (by funny women). | Lit Hub Reading Lists

“I have marked the date of this entry with great confidence, but I must ~~confess the secret to you, Ethel~~ admit that M—and I can no longer be certain if it is a Monday or a Friday.” Read from Deepa Anappara’s new novel, The Last of Earth. | Lit Hub Fiction

“Neighbor, you died a poet’s death, witness and justice your final actions.” Danez Smith memorializes Renee Nicole Good, poet, mother, and neighbor. | Harper’s Bazaar

John M. Owen IV considers the lessons of the late German legal theorist Carl Schmitt for the second Trump era. | The Hedgehog Review

“His hope that the freaks could replace the proletariat as agents of political and social revolution, however, was disabused.” On the political life of Hunter S. Thompson. | The New Statesman

Sam Firman recommends readings on the rights of nature. | JSTOR Daily

Jeff Weinstein tries fine dining courtesy of New York’s most hyped grocery store. | The Baffler

“Like a lot of people you see in LA in various states of lucidity, John seemed to be living in an eternal present.” Michael Casper profiles the last intellectual. | n+1

A SWEEPING VISION OF RESISTANCE

For more than four centuries, enslaved people across the Americas fought any way they could to gain their freedom. For the first time, their dramatic stories are gathered in one sweeping narrative that offers a message of inspiration in our own time.

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SPELLBINDING AND EVOCATIVE

Set over one hot summer, Madeleine Dunnigan’s Jean is a startlingly assured debut about the kinds of love that break us and make us whole.

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