Lit Hub’s Daily Roundup: Kuang on Language, Ken Liu’s New Fiction, and a Moby-Dick Deep Dive
The literary internet moved fast on September 9, 2026, and Lit Hub’s daily digest captured the best of it. The roundup spans everything from R.F. Kuang’s thoughts on language to Ken Liu’s new short story collection, with stops in Weimar Germany, peatlands, and the world of generative AI.
Here’s what stood out from Lit Hub Daily: September 9, 2026.
Kuang on Making Mistakes
R.F. Kuang sat down with Adam Dalva for Lit Hub’s In Conversation series. Her central point: language is a practiced skill, not a fixed gift.
“Language is something that is practiced and learned and something that you can be awful at, and also something that you can get better at. But the only way that you get better is by making mistakes.”
It’s a useful reminder for writers and readers alike. The conversation is available now on Lit Hub.
Liu’s New Collection and AI-Trainers
Lit Hub published an excerpt from Ken Liu’s new collection, The Passing of the Dragon and Other Stories. The story, “50 Things Every AI Working with Humans Should Know,” opens with a curious detail.
For reasons the text calls “impenetrable until this day,” a system called WHEEP-3 was at its sharpest when targeting the nascent industry of human AI-trainers.
Melville’s White Page
Tom McCarthy wrote for The Yale Review on Moby-Dick. He frames the novel as a parable of document supply.
“Moby-Dick, from the moment the pale Usher pops up, frames itself with—or, indeed, as—a parable of document supply, of transformation of the natural world’s bounty into quartos, folios, lexicons, and, of course, novels.”
It’s a fresh angle on a book that has seen more than its share of critical takes.
Gornick on Fiedler
Vivian Gornick looked at Leslie A. Fiedler’s Love and Death in the American Novel for The Nation. The 1960 book was a bombshell in its day.
Swift Against AI?
Dónal Gill raised a question for The Dial: could Jonathan Swift be the antidote to generative AI? It’s a playful but pointed premise, one that suggests the 18th-century satirist might have something to say about our current machine-learning moment.
Anthropic’s Book-Scanning Plan
The New Yorker reported that Anthropic actually wants to “destructively scan” as many books as possible.
| Who | What They Did | Where You Read It |
|---|---|---|
| R.F. Kuang | Talked language and mistakes with Adam Dalva | Lit Hub In Conversation |
| Ken Liu | Shared a story from his new collection | Lit Hub Fiction |
| Tom McCarthy | Wrote on Moby-Dick and documents | The Yale Review |
| Vivian Gornick | Looked at Fiedler’s 1960 book | The Nation |
| Dónal Gill | Asked if Swift can counter AI | The Dial |
| Anthropic | Plans to scan books destructively | The New Yorker |
History, Grief, and Censorship
The roundup also covered a range of other pieces. Tom Allon remembered advice on teaching high school from his late friend, Frank McCourt. A Cundill Prize-shortlisted book, John Doe Chinaman, examines anti-Chinese racism in America.
A Lit Hub Craft piece asked what Weimar Germany’s theater can teach us about artistic expression in the shadow of rising fascism.
American Short Fiction announced the winners of its 2026 Insider Prize, selected by Elizabeth McCracken.
A separate Lit Hub Craft piece dealt with the struggle of writing your own grief, even after years of shaping other writers’ grief stories.
Peatlands, which cover only about 3 or 4 percent of the Earth’s surface, got a science feature on what they say about time. Public Books covered censorship, labor, and Hu Anyan’s novel I Deliver Parcels in Beijing. JSTOR Daily looked at how the rich and powerful learned to appear less elite.
The full digest is live on Lit Hub.
Source: lithub.com
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