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  • Craft and Criticism
    • Literary Criticism
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How to Build a Dictionary: On the Hard Art of Popular Lexicography

How to Build a Dictionary: On the Hard Art of Popular Lexicography

Ilan Stavans and Peter Gilliver Discuss the Philosophical and Pragmatic Aspects of the Oxford English Dictionary

By Ilan Stavans | September 29, 2025

Announcing the winner of the 2024 Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing.

Announcing the winner of the 2024 Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing.

By Literary Hub | November 25, 2024

American Literature is a History of the Nation’s Libraries

American Literature is a History of the Nation’s Libraries

Ilan Stavans on One of Democracy’s Bedrock Institutions

By Ilan Stavans | February 16, 2022

What Makes Jewish Literature “Jewish”?

What Makes Jewish Literature “Jewish”?

Ilan Stavans on Belonging, Bookishness, and Memory

By Ilan Stavans | July 9, 2021

Ilan Stavans on Sympathy, Eroticism, and the Practice of Revision in Translation

Ilan Stavans on Sympathy, Eroticism, and the Practice of Revision in Translation

The Author of Selected Translations In Conversation with Peter Cole

By Peter Cole | March 26, 2021

Three Authors Leave, Stay, Dream, and Long for Elsewhere

Three Authors Leave, Stay, Dream, and Long for Elsewhere

Jhumpa Lahiri, Eduardo Halfon, and Ilan Stavans in Conversation

By Jhumpa Lahiri, Eduardo Halfon, and Ilan Stavans | August 24, 2020

Best Reviewed
Books of the Week

  • Big Kiss, Bye-Bye
  • Bad Bad Girl
  • The Ten Year Affair
  • Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice
  • Motherland: A Feminist History of Modern Russia, from Revolution to Autocracy
  • Pride and Pleasure: The Schuyler Sisters in an Age of Revolution

Announcing the Winner of Restless Books New Immigrant Writing Prize

By Literary Hub | November 15, 2018

Mapping the World of Jewish Latin American Literature

By Ilan Stavans | February 28, 2018

Latin America’s Answer to Karl Ove Knausgaard

By Ilan Stavans | November 14, 2017

All Writing is a Kind of Exile

All Writing is a Kind of Exile

Ilan Stavans and Carlos Fonseca in Conversation

By Literary Hub | December 12, 2016

How Borges Taught Me to Embrace My Jewish Heritage

How Borges Taught Me to Embrace My Jewish Heritage

"Borges was my rabbinical master in a Yeshiva the Size of the Globe"

By Ilan Stavans | September 2, 2016

Announcing the Winner of Restless Books New Immigrant Writing Prize

Announcing the Winner of Restless Books New Immigrant Writing Prize

Congratulations to Deepak Unnikrishnan, author of "Temporary People"

By Literary Hub | May 10, 2016

<em>Hamlet</em>, Translated into Spanglish

Hamlet, Translated into Spanglish

Ilan Stavans Offers a New Version of English Literature's Most Famous Scene

By Ilan Stavans | April 25, 2016

<em>Don Quixote</em>: Sloppy, Inconsistent, Baffling, Perfect

Don Quixote: Sloppy, Inconsistent, Baffling, Perfect

On the Magical Hyper-realism of a 400-Year-Old Classic

By Ilan Stavans | October 7, 2015

Jodorowsky on God, Anti-Semitism and the Uses of Poetry

Jodorowsky on God, Anti-Semitism and the Uses of Poetry

A Conversation with the Man Who Didn't Make 'Dune'

By Literary Hub | May 29, 2015

    • 7 Novels That Explore Motherhood's ComplexitiesNovember 4, 2025 by Donna Freitas
    • To Break Up with Friends, or to Murder Them: 5 Novels Featuring Fatal Friendship FailingsNovember 4, 2025 by Jenna Satterthwaite
    • The Trauma Behind the "Good Old Days": Christina Henry on the Dark Trap of Nostalgia in FictionNovember 4, 2025 by Christina Henry
    • Big Kiss, Bye-Bye
    • The Best Reviewed Books of the Week
    • "Not much happens In fact there is much in the text that is not made…"
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