Welcome, readers, to the first happy list of 2026! It’s already shaping up to be another year where easy joy goes thin on the ground, so celebrating the little things feels more important than ever. Here’s what’s making your friendly neighborhood Lit Hub staff smile this Friday.
In New York City, it’s festival season—for the artiest art monsters of your acquaintance, anyway. I, Brittany Allen, have been enjoying several brand new plays and works for performance via the Exponential Festival and the Under the Radar Festival, two concurrent theatre explosions that celebrate weird work.
The (scrappy) former has been hosting experimental performance in New York since 2016. Where the (chic) latter has brought a globally minded, Biennalish sensibility to our shores since 2003. Between the two, one can get the sense that downtown theatre is alive and well. So if you’re also starting the year with some My Dinner with Andre energy, do take note.
Favorites fest picks so far include Mami, a surrealist silent movement piece from the Greek Albanian director, Mario Banushi (UTR). I also dug playwright Jay Stull’s mighty meta, excellently acted spec-dystopia, my utopias (Expo). If you hurry, you can still catch tickets to the latter!
James Folta is also kicking off the year as a culture vulture. Last week, our staff writer got to see a handful of short films that have been made the Oscar cut.
James says Beyond Silence was “devastating and incredibly well acted.” And The Quinta’s Ghost, an animated horror about Goya’s Black Paintings, was also a trip. But the stand-outs in a solid evening were two literary offerings.
The “very, very funny” Jane Austen’s Period Drama made high art of a pun. And The Singers, based on a Turgenev short, “was a beautiful and funny film about emotion and art” with extraordinary production values.
We’re well reminded to remember the little guys.
Drew Broussard leapt into 2026 on a tide of creativity. After an institutional residency fell through (“Never trust being in the first cohort somewhere!”), our podcasts editor arranged a solo writing retreat in rural Vermont.
Drew wrote for four days. Well: he “read and took baths and watched TV and slept AND wrote a bunch, over four days,” which is even better for well-filling. Follow his example and you too may be able to face down The Horrors.
Though good art work is spiritual maintenance, Molly Odintz reminds us this week to maintain our earthly vessels. Her nice thing was a colonoscopy. Because “preventative health care is great.”
The procedure is apparently nowhere near as scary as certain films have hyped it up to be. And now, knock wood, our Crimereads managing editor will live for 150 years.
Wishing you a weekend of good health, good art, and good living. Catch joy where you can!
