TODAY: In 1975, Soviet poet, writer, playwright and journalist Olga Fyodorovna Bergholz dies.
- “The sickness that once detached him from life had now made him greedy for experience.” How Robert Louis Stevenson navigated a lifetime of chronic illness. | Lit Hub Biography
- Why choosing the word of the year is such an intense process. | Lit Hub
- George Packer talks to Andy Hunter about his new novel, The Emergency, apocalypse, and the future of America. | Lit Hub In Conversation
- “October 9, 2025, will forever remain etched in my memory as a day of fragile hope.” On the first moments of ceasefire in Gaza. | Lit Hub Memoir
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“Here is a writer of such intimate and insightful prose that stealing away with him for a few hours in another world feels closer to trespassing than reading.” 5 book reviews you need to read this week. | Book Marks
- Tiffany Graham Charkosky wants to know why film and literature often can’t tell the truth about losing a parent. | Lit Hub Memoir
- Eve Dunbar on Alice Childress and the creative, professional, and manual labor performed by Black women in America. | Lit Hub Biography
- “Suddenly it felt like so much was going on, even though nothing was going on. But actually, something was going on.” Read from Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore’s new novel, Terry Dactyl. | Lit Hub Fiction
- “The science backing up the idea that race can make someone a good or bad scientist or airline pilot is as solid as the logic behind ‘orcs can’t be wizards’ or ‘a hobbit can never become a great fighter.’” Adam Serwer on perpetual misinterpretations of Tolkien, and why Elon Musk needs Dungeons and Dragons to be racist. | The Atlantic
- Jonathan Agin considers William Blake’s “radically anti-imperialist, counter-enlightenment spirit.” | Jacobin
- “It’s of course unreasonable to compare my mother’s texting quirks to Virginia Woolf’s prose.” Madeline Cash considers uses of ellipses. | Granta
- Janus Rose explains why AI is the ultimate forced meme. | Aftermath
- Greg Hunter applies a late-style reading to the comics of Gilbert Hernandez. | The Comics Journal
