TODAY: In 1961, Robert Frost recites his poem, “The Greatest Gift,” at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy. He intended to recite a poem he’d written for the occasion, “Dedication,” but the sun reflecting off the snow-covered ground made reading the poem too difficult so Frost he recited “The Greatest Gift” from memory instead.
- To write about the first woman M.D. in America, Janice P. Nimura decided to shadow another doctor… while they delivered a baby. | Lit Hub
- “The word was a badge that had been pinned to me, only I hadn’t earned it, and had no interest in doing so.” Emily Rapp Black on being called “resilient” after loss. | Lit Hub Memoir
- How the sewing machine and the camera empowered African women to create their own stories—and fashion—after colonialism. | Lit Hub History
- Sorry to break it to you, but scientists don’t know if dogs actually dream (or much else about consciousness, for that matter). | Lit Hub Science
- Jonathon Lichtenstein reflects on intergenerational trauma as he travels through Berlin with his father, who escaped Nazi Germany on a Kindertransport. | Lit Hub
- Paula Hawkins on Patricia Highsmith’s Strangers on a Train, 70 years later. | CrimeReads
- The Haunting of Hill House, The Yellow Wallpaper, Grimms’ Fairy Tales, and more rapid-fire book recs from Camilla Bruce. | Book Marks
- Manners, literature, imagination, reality itself: Charles Yu, Eileen Myles, Lauren Oyler, and others discuss life after Trump. | Harper’s
- “My real identity, the one that follows me around like a migraine, is that I am the daughter of immigrants. As such, I have some skills of my own.” Karla Cornejo Villavicencio on waking up from the American Dream. | The New Yorker
- “How did an entire subgenre of literature spring up around a few thousand rich people who lived during the 1810s?” On the origins of the modern Regency romance. | JSTOR Daily
- Ibram X. Kendi recommends 10 of 2020’s best political books by Black women. | The Atlantic
- “The idea is, we act consciously on the page and in life”: Zan Romanoff talks to Matthew Salesses about writing, revision, and remaking the workshop. | Hazlitt
- “There are forces at work in the publishing industry that don’t want these books to succeed.” A roundtable on experimental and marginalized work. | Full Stop
- Rachel Gable on the “hidden curriculum of tacit norms and rules” that first-generation college students must navigate. | Inside Higher Ed
Also on Lit Hub: Michael Woodridge on the limits of literary automation • “Fable,” a poem by Ahmed Bouanani and translated by Deborah Kapchan • Read an excerpt from Laura Newman’s new short story collection, The Franklin Avenue Rookery for Wayward Babies.