According to the powers that be (er, apparently according to Dan Wickett of the Emerging Writers Network), May is Short Story Month. To celebrate, for the second year in a row, the Literary Hub staff will be recommending a single short story, free* to read online, every (work) day of the month. Why not read along with us? Today, we recommend: “The...

TODAY: In 1862, Henry David Thoreau dies.  “If there’s any metaphor I would use for the act of writing, it would have to be listening.” Jon Fosse on how writing plays transformed his craft. | Lit Hub Craft Rebecca Kormos on the changing face of nature and climate narratives: “In truth, I hunger for books about nature and science by women.” | Lit...

Daniel Noboa, the president of Ecuador, might have saved himself a lot of trouble, if he had only read more Latin American literature. Perhaps he would not have ordered the police to storm the Mexican embassy to arrest former Vice President Jorge Glas, who had been granted asylum there. That unprecedented action—breaching long standing treaties that...

I said to myself I think you’re scared of the algorithms, Auxilio, Auxilio wrote, if you call this Antonio individual from your device, I think I thought, which is registered under my name, and you reach him on his device, which is probably registered under his name, you will awaken the American algorithms, but why have you come to imagine the algorithms...

“I won’t show his picture to my relatives until he cuts his hair,” my mother said, an ultimatum I hadn’t imagined. I imagined: “It’s either Quincy or us,” not “It’s either Quincy’s dreadlocks or my relatives.” I was visiting my parents, just me. Her words broke into an otherwise languid afternoon. As she went on about Quincy’s dreads, a dreadlocked...

My father was born and raised in Norway, and I’ve spoken the language since living there for seven months when I was 12. In 2003, while visiting family in Oslo, my Dad’s cousin and her husband (who I consider my aunt and uncle) introduced me to the work of Jon Fosse. I read Fosse’s play Vinter (Winter) in his original New Norwegian (nynorsk), and later...