Lit Hub Daily: June 1, 2026

THE BEST OF THE LITERARY INTERNET

TODAY: In 1857, Charles Baudelaire‘s Les Fleurs du mal is published. 

• “It felt as if Eileen had found a box of pencils they wrote with in the 1970s and asked if I would like to take a look at them.” CAConrad on Eileen Myles’ “Bird Watching.” | Lit Hub Criticism
• From slugs to watermelons, these 10 new children’s books are a perfect way to kick off summer. | Lit Hub Reading Lists
• Alexandra Oliva takes doing research for her novel to a whole new altitude. | Lit Hub Craft
• Craig Morgan Teicher recommends poetry collections coming in June by Carl Dennis, Fanny Howe, Amanda Nadelberg, and others. | Lit Hub Poetry
• This week in literary history, Carson McCullers’ debut novel, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, is published. | Lit Hub History
• This month’s best sci-fi and fantasy books feature unicorn diversions, robot valets, and more! | Lit Hub Reading Lists
• Author Julia Cooke and artist Paul Elie discuss group portraiture, the focus of a book, and writing secret histories. | Lit Hub In Conversation
• Sarah Wang on growing up in an immigrant household and writing a book her mother will never read. | Lit Hub Craft
• “Fanny has just told me that her most cherished lover, Lucia, told her a cat drowned yesterday in the Canal Saint-Martin.” Read from Deborah Levy’s new novel, My Year in Paris with Gertrude Stein. | Lit Hub Fiction
• Why are fish so gay? Four queer writers discuss using aquatic life as an organizing principle in their work. | Orion
• Maris Kreizman considers the rise of “ragebait lit.” | Harper’s Bazaar
• Kate Knibbs asks Steve Rosenbaum, whose book about how AI warps perception was produced with assistance from AI, to explain himself. | Wired
• Wikipedia editors are considering a strike. | The Verge
• “Given New York’s disdain for Chinese opera in Chinatown, why did elite audiences clamor to see it uptown?” H.M.A. Leow looks at the reception of Chinese opera in New York. | JSTOR Daily

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