Lit Hub Daily: September 18, 2026

THE BEST OF THE LITERARY INTERNET

TODAY: In 1897, Henry James’ novel What Maisie Knew is published as a book after originally being serialized.

• When formal sex ed is insufficient, can romance novels pick up the slack? | Lit Hub Criticism
• Janet Manley interviews 2026 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award Winner Jon Klassen: “I think having kids just really reaffirmed the validity of that time for me. They are having real days, as important as mine or anyone else’s.” | Lit Hub In Conversation
• How Isabel Allende transformed a letter to her grandfather into The House of the Spirits. | Lit Hub Craft
• “To call evil banal is to call it boring, and if it is boring, its appeal is limited. Few things are less erotic than a fungus.” On how we recognize evil (assuming it exists). | Lit Hub Politics
• Emily St. John Mandel’s Exit Party, Ben Macintyre’s Redwood, Kate Atkinson’s Our Noble Selves, and Naomi Klein & Astra Taylor’s End Times Fascism all feature among the best reviewed books of the week. | Book Marks
• Antonella Lettieri recounts translating Roberta Recchia’s debut novel, All That is Left of Life. | Lit Hub On Translation
• “I never expected horses to become a theme in my life.” Read from Genevieve Plunkett’s new novel, The Lonely Girl’s Vegetable Patch. | Lit Hub Fiction
• Sophia Kercher explores the fandom that’s developed around Mona Awad’s Bunny. | Los Angeles Times
• Beth Blum revisits the story of Love Story author (and Yale classicist) Erich Segal, whose “tortured academic love story offers a historical window onto the ongoing tension between academic and popular taste.” | Chronicle of Higher Education
• “Taken together, these films constitute a sensationalistic reckoning with the grim legacy of Southern culture in the United States.” Eileen Jones considers the Southern Gothic in cinema and literature. | Jacobin
• On the cruelty of rendering land uninhabitable. | Public Books
• H.M.A. Leow traces how pop music in Cambodia survived the Khmer Rouge. | JSTOR Daily

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