American literature is a tapestry, its lineage of great writers the strands that weave it together. In 2025, this interconnected multiplicity was on full display from Library of America, both in the books we publish and our vast array of online resources—essays, interviews, videos, and podcasts—aimed at exploring this inexhaustible living legacy.
Below you’ll find more than forty pieces of content published on our website this year, available for free to our community of readers across the world. Flannery O’Connor’s centennial sparked a series of tributes from our editors, a virtual panel on Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism went viral, and an exclusive screening of O Mother Gaia: The World of Gary Snyder connected an international audience with this singular portrait of an American original and literary lodestar.
Happy New Year from Library of America, and onward to 2026!
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Essays | Interviews | Latino Poetry | News | Videos
Rolling Along: The Next Wave of American Musical Revivals
“The Happiest Time of Her Life”: Flannery O’Connor in Connecticut with Sally and Robert Fitzgerald
“O Indispensable Books!”: A Peek at Edmund Wilson’s Summer Reading List
Rewriting the Rules: Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”
“An Uncompromising Revolution”: The Tragic Death and Long Afterlife of Margaret Fuller
“That Was the E-Mail Exchange That Was”: Tom Lehrer Weighs In on the Greatest American Musicals
“Fellow Beings”: The Many Lives of Ursula K. Le Guin’s Cats
“The Beauty in the Muck”: Raj Tawney on the Luminous Legacy of Pete Hamill
New Collection of Letters Highlights John Updike’s LOA Legacy
The Tapestry of War and Memory: Elizabeth D. Samet on World War II Memoirs: The European Theater
“His Own Sense of Higher Justice”: C. M. Kushins on the Freewheeling Career of Elmore Leonard
“Fearless Frankness, Ultimate Secrets”: Classicist Sarah Ruden on the Mythic Journey of Sylvia Plath
Dreaming in Didion: Alissa Wilkinson on Hollywood, Politics, and Joan Didion
“The Odd, the Queer, the Strange, the Exotic, the Monstrous”: Christopher Benfey on Lafcadio Hearn
“The Shock of Reality”: Thomas Wild on Hannah Arendt’s Towering Analysis of Totalitarianism
“Putting the Poem First”: Stephanie Burt on the Towering Literary Legacy of Helen Vendler
Maps and Legends: The Spectacular Cartography of Ursula K. Le Guin
“War on the Kitchen Sink”: Michael Paller on the Larger-Than-Life Plays of John Guare
“Dreaming Up the Entire Universe”: Juan Felipe Herrera on the Craft and Cosmology of the Poem
Poet and Revolutionary José Martí on Walt Whitman, the United States, and the Universal “I”
Emerging Writers Take Home Classic Books and Cash Purse at 2025 Whiting Awards
“Language Intense and Clear as Diamonds”: Poet Samuel Menashe’s Centenary
“A Cartoon Universe”: 75 Years of Charles Schulz’s Peanuts
Behind the Book: The Annotated Great Gatsby
Editorial Fellowship Grows Next Generation of Publishing Leaders
LOA at the Movies: Film Adaptations from the Brilliant to the Bizarre
What Is Totalitarianism? Understanding Hannah Arendt Now
The Greatness of Sylvia Plath, with Sarah Ruden, Diane Seuss, Heather Clark, and Amanda Golden
O Mother Gaia: Director Colin Still Reveals the World of Gary Snyder
Remembering Victory: World War II Memoirs of the European Theater
The Black Fantastic: The New Wave of Afrofuturist Fiction
Reading Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America Now
The Radical Imagination of Octavia E. Butler, with Imani Perry and Tananarive Due
Liberation & the Literature of the Women’s Movement, with Bess Wohl and Honor Moore
