How Genre Fiction Became Respectable
Tracing which genres achieved literary status, which remain excluded, and the institutional forces determining these classifications
How Book Clubs Shape Literary Markets
The curation economy reshapes which books find readers and how those books get understood
Why Writers Keep Teaching
How the economics of writing made the university literature's primary patron and prison.
The Audiobook Revolution's Literary Consequences
How the rise of audiobook consumption is transforming prose style, publishing economics, and literary culture's gatekeeping debates
The Rise and Risks of Sensitivity Reading
How a practice meant to improve representation became publishing's most contested editorial intervention
How Book Tours Became Author Burdens
Publishers quietly transferred marketing labor to authors—creating a system that rewards privilege over prose.
How Literary Prizes Actually Work
The institutional machinery behind literary awards reveals more about publishing culture than about literary merit itself.
Why Literary Magazines Still Matter
How journals with tiny readerships wield enormous power through credentialing, aesthetic sorting, and the economics of institutional prestige
The Autofiction Explosion Explained
How social media, publishing economics, and genuine artistic innovation converged to make autobiographical fiction inescapable—and why the tide is turning.
How Independent Bookstores Curate Literary Taste
Inside the human networks of trust and expertise that determine which literary voices break through the noise
Why Translation Shapes World Literature
How translator scarcity, domestication preferences, and colonial legacies determine which international voices actually reach English readers.
Why MFA Programs Became Literary Gatekeepers
How graduate writing programs reshaped American fiction by controlling who writes, what gets valued, and which paths lead to literary careers.
The Quiet Death of the Midlist Author
How publishing consolidation eliminated the sustainable middle-tier literary career, forcing authors into bestseller-or-bust economics or fragmented hybrid professions.
The Literary Agent's Hidden Power
Inside the invisible infrastructure where agent tastes, relationships, and strategies determine which manuscripts become books and which voices reach readers.