Lit Hub Daily: August 28, 2026

THE BEST OF THE LITERARY INTERNET

TODAY: In 1749, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is born. 

• “He wrote sad songs but didn’t want to make anyone sad. He had the kind of shy, exaggerated empathy of someone who’s always afraid of hurting people but never afraid of hurting himself.” On loving Elliott Smith. | Lit Hub Music
• Wallis Wilde-Menozzi reflects on translating Antonella Anedda, a poet who “creates space for other ways of telling.” | Lit Hub On Translation
• How object narrators, from the 18th century to now, help humans see the world in different ways. | Lit Hub Criticism
• Chang-Rae Lee’s A Tender Age, Jill Lepore’s The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State, Téa Obreht’s Sunrise, and Dave Zirin’s The People’s Historian all feature among August’s best reviewed books. | Book Marks
• How to situate your historical fiction in its time and place: “There’s no excuse for wheeling in some talkative NPC just to explain why the townsfolk are acting skittish. As with most technical problems, find a solution that’s natural and unobtrusive.” | Lit Hub Craft
• “It was twilight. A horse approached, and from its speed it was clear that it intended to cross me.” Read from Jiyar Jahin Fard’s novel The Shadeless Border, translated by Chiya Parvizpur. | Lit Hub Fiction
• Jeremy Varon examines what’s happening at The New School (and across higher education). | Dissent
• “But while Like Swimmers borrows the machinery of detective fiction, one of its primary concerns is the divide between fine art and popular art.” Marc Sobel on Dash Shaw’s newest graphic novel. | The Comics Journal
• Elizabeth Metzger looks at Franz Wright’s final poetry collection, “written from the realms of mental illness, addiction, religious conversion, and a weighty poetic lineage.” | Los Angeles Review of Books
• “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 else was mere packaging.” Xochitl Gonzalez on Dolly Parton’s unabashed femininity. | The Cut
• It turns out those ghost researchers haunting academic publishing were produced by AI. | 404 Media
• Charlotte Wyatt explores the possibilities of human-wild animal connection. | Orion

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