The Top Literary Blogs You Should Be Reading

Founded in 2009 as a quarterly print magazine, Electric Literature is now one of the most savvy and invigorating websites concerned with writing and reading. Besides all manner of news and essays, the editors maintain Reading Lists, a forum for original fiction chosen and introduced by their huge network of writers.

Run out of Canada by Random House, Hazlitt is home to a melange of stories, whether that be personal essay, investigative reporting or criticism. The distinguished list of contributors – which includes Soraya Roberts and Sarah Gerard to name just two luminaries of non-fiction – make for a magazine site as incisive and hard-hitting as anything on the news rack.

Combining politics with non-fiction and photography, Guernica is another fully fledged magazine that happens to publish online. For first-class reporting as only Guernica can deliver, look for gems such as Jacob Albert’s The Fire in Dunkirk on life in a Kurdish refugee camp.

The literary worldlooks very different from when The New Inquiry first appeared in 2009. Now one of the most respected and scholarly authorities currently operating, and boasting contributors such as Teju Cole and Aaron Bady, itproved the younger generation of literary minds had something to offer the critical establishment, and it has remained an outstanding and complete compendium of responses to all the intellectual and pop-cultural engagements of our time.

The most charming and offbeat book blog around comes from indie publisher Melville House, which maintains MobyLives, your one-stop shop for political commentary, Dolly Parton-based news bulletins and Saturday morning cartoons. It follows that a company named after the author of Bartleby, the Scrivener should release such a charmingly idiosyncratic blog about books.

Since launching in 2015, Literary Hub has become one of the most comprehensive literary websites on the internet, with contributions from virtually every corner of publishing: mainstream publishers such as Simon & Schuster frequently post excerpts from eagerly awaited titles, while smaller houses such as Graywolf Press and New Directions solicit original material from their stable of authors. Nor is it unusual to see bulletins from non-profits such as PEN America and independent bookstores from around the country.

Long-running book blog The Millions can claim seniority over most of the blogs on this list, having been online since 2003 – it can also lay claim to some of the most distinguished contributors conceivable, with regular reviews, personal essays, previews and news items authored by Sam Lipsyte, Rivka Galchen, Wells Tower, Margaret Atwood, Jeffrey Eugenides and many others.

When it comes to book news, appreciations and first-class writing from The New Yorker staff and a stable of prize-winning writers, their literary blog, Page-Turner, often rivals the print magazine, with a huge archive of weekly contributions rising to the standard of the culture magazine.