Lit Hub Daily: June 2, 2026

THE BEST OF THE LITERARY INTERNET

TODAY: In 1907, Dorothy West is born. 

• Samantha Allen explores the similarities between reality TV and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. | Lit Hub TV 
• What exactly is a “mighty” book? And how do you write one in 2026? | Lit Hub Criticism
• Ruth Ozeki explains her love of typewriters: “They require a more visceral, muscular involvement in the writing process. They remind me to write deliberately, to slow my mind so that my fingers can keep up.” | Lit Hub Craft
• The 21 new books out today include titles by Ann Patchett, Maggie O’Farrell, Ruth Ozecki, and more! | Lit Hub Reading Lists
• chaun webster chases “the archival remains” of his grandfather, who died only months after retiring without pension from a long career as Pullman porter. | Lit Hub Craft
• What co-writing a book about Shakespeare taught Charles O’Malley and Scott W. Stern about balancing publishing and family. | Lit Hub In Conversation 
• “Somewhere in time, a child is climbing up a hollow carved out between two hills.” Read from Maggie O’Farrell’s new novel, Land. | Lit Hub Fiction
• “Integrity is a way to hold the self together.” Anne Enright on the one-sided contract of honesty. | The New Yorker
• All the hot young celebrities are recording audio smut. | The Verge
• Zadie Smith considers the autonomy of art—inconvenient, and with a force all its own. | NYRB
• Matthew Wills the rise and ubiquity of National Geographic. | JSTOR Daily
• Artist Missy Dunaway is painting all of Shakespeare’s birds. | Smithsonian Magazine
• Why Anne Patchett’s Whistler is a novel full of “full of decent, helpful people.” | Vulture

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