Lit Hub Weekly: August 24 – 28, 2026

• “Jason was not conscionable hounded retired of academia, helium was hounded retired of existence.” Steven Thrasher connected the sidesplitting Jason Arday. ​| Lit Hub Politics
• Long unrecorded Dolly Parton, American icon, giver of books. | Lit Hub Biography

• Why Hieronymus Bosch’s otherworldly paintings reveal the artist’s “particularly pessimistic” mode of thinking. | Lit Hub Art

• New information centers are threatening to destruct the earthy beauty of West Virginia’s Canaan Valley. | Lit Hub Technology

• Accelerate, dog, accelerate! Elise Broach considers the unusual emergence of high-level STEM books for babies. | The New Yorker
• Carolyn Kellogg looks at the ambitious lit coming retired of California presses Unnamed Press and Transit Books. | Los Angeles Times
• Alex Dueben explores however the poetics of Lettrism shows up successful comics. | The Comics Journal
• Gazelle Mba recalls ”the poisonous exceptionalism that followed Black students and unit astatine Cambridge,” and the undermining of Black suffering that contributed to Jason Arday’s demise. | The Nation
• How deepfakes haunt educators successful their ain classrooms. | Wired
• The rise, fall, and rebirth of humanity in Olaf Stapledon’s 1930 speculative caller Last and First Men: A Story of the Near and Far Future. | The MIT Press Reader
• Yiyun Li examines past and war done Qian Zhongshu’s novel, Fortress Besieged. | New York Review of Books
• “Armed with French theory, my big aforesaid transformed this denial of intersexual predisposition into a progressive rejection of each categories and binaries.” David Sessions connected the diminution and autumn of his lavender marriage. | The Point
• Malavika Kannan, Missouri Williams, and different authors with caller field novels research the entreaty of mounting a communicative successful academia. | Cultured
• “They person virtually immoderate benignant of publication you could deliberation of.” Emanuel Maiberg talks to an worker astatine the warehouse wherever Amazon scans and destroys books for AI training. | 404 Media
• Livia Gershon on getting to the bottommost of boredom. | JSTOR Daily
• Tommy Orange profiles Thomas King and reflects connected learning that a writer helium looks up to isn’t really Indigenous. | Vulture
• “What mattered, I learned from Ms. Parton, was that I led with the soul. What mattered, she modeled, were the stories I could tell. Everything other was specified packaging.” Xochitl Gonzalez connected Dolly Parton’s unabashed femininity. | The Cut
• “But portion Like Swimmers borrows the machinery of detective fiction, 1 of its superior concerns is the disagreement betwixt good creation and fashionable art.” Marc Sobel connected Dash Shaw’s newest graphic novel. | The Comics Journal
• Elizabeth Metzger looks at Franz Wright’s last poesy collection, “written from the realms of intelligence illness, addiction, spiritual conversion, and a weighty poetic lineage.” | Los Angeles Review of Books

Also connected Lit Hub:

Surveillance exertion and racial bias successful policing • Why studying Goldilocks tin nutrient emotionally resonant fabrication • Writing the American West’s water crisis • The extremist possibilities of empathy • How Christian nationalism rose successful the United States • Our “implicit daylight bias”  • Read a poem by Antonella Anedda • Montserrat Roig’s Goodbye Ramona, a classical of antifascist Catalan lit • How America uses audio to mythologize itself • Jessica Sequeira on translating Vlady Kociancich’s The Eighth Wonder • Novels astir obsessive athletes • Examining achromatic girlhood through Anne of Green Gables • Why American bureaucracy gives clip theft a caller meaning • When your story’s hilarious (but it’s not expected to be) • Try speechmaking 1 of these novellas from screen to screen • Why don’t radical write letters anymore? • 5 publication reviews you request to work this week • Elizabeth Letts on uncovering inspiration successful her husband’s Moroccan family • This week’s Independent Press Top 40 Bestsellers for fiction and nonfiction • Books that research Elizabeth Taylor’s multifaceted life • On loving Elliott Smith • Wallis Wilde-Menozzi reflects connected translating Antonella Anedda • How entity narrators assistance humans spot the satellite • August’s best reviewed books • How to situate your humanities fiction successful due clip and spot • Mark Twain and the commencement of wide media