Lit Hub Daily: September 8, 2026

THE BEST OF THE LITERARY INTERNET

TODAY: In 1924, Grace Metalious is born.

• A new season means new books. Here are 35 titles you need to read this fall. | Lit Hub Reading Lists
• Emily Wilson talks to Leanne Ogasawara about “the high stakes and complexities of translation,” complicated men, and her essay collection, Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea. | Lit Hub On Translation 
• Brian Dillon explores the deeply personal nature of loving Virginia Woolf’s The Waves. | Lit Hub Criticism
• Alexander Lee examines Jewish history and identity in Europe via the ghetto of Venice, from his Cundill Prize-shortlisted The First Ghetto. | Lit Hub History
• Read the winners of American Short Fiction’s 2026 Insider Prize, as selected by Elizabeth McCracken. | Lit Hub
• The 20 new books out today include work by Emma Cline, R. F. Kuang, Alice Hoffman, and more! | Lit Hub Reading Lists
• On the hazards of over-identifying with your job. | Lit Hub Health
• Today in literary history, William S. Burroughs kills Joan Vollmer in a drunken party game: “The details remain unproveable, and reports of the event vary, even from the few eyewitnesses, but the legend has remained.” | Lit Hub History
• “You chose this program based on money and because you never had a Black person of any gender teach you anything about writing or reading.” Read “How to be a Black Author” from Megan Giddings’s story collection, Black Arts. | Lit Hub Fiction
• When does the world need your words, and when does it need your action? Should you go to that organizing meeting or meet your deadline? Steinem lived these tensions, wrestling with them and, sometimes, writing about them.” Maggie Doherty on Gloria Steinem’s life in writing and activism. | The New Republic
• What does a MrBeast/James Patterson collaboration look like? Strange, and bad, but nevertheless: a book! | Slate
• “There’s an irreverence to giving a poem its most obvious title. It just is what it is.” Dorothea Lasky on her collection, Mother. | The Paris Review
• Why does AI-generated food look like that? | The Verge
• Is the internet really killing literature, or has it expanded it? Aarthi Vadde explores the potential of the literary web. | Los Angeles Review of Books

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