Lit Hub Weekly: February 22 – 26, 2021

TODAY: In 1902, John Steinbeck is born in Salinas, California.

Introducing The Longest Year: 2020+, photo essays from the year that won’t end. Up first, Elissa Schappell reflects on Rachel Cobb’s NYC dreamscape of protests and PPE. | Lit Hub
“The protagonist could be our lost brother or uncle. Disaster is familiar, even eloquent.” Joy Harjo on the extraordinary storytelling of James Welch’s Winter in the Blood. | Lit Hub
Care to prove your literary prowess? How many of the 100 most famous passages in literature can you identify? | Lit Hub
“To exterminate human beings with chemicals, as though they were fleas or cockroaches—this, to the young doctor, was a different order of savagery.” Joby Warrick on the search for answers after a poison-gas attack in Saraqeb. | Lit Hub
“This is the work of a writer unconstrained by expectations, or anything remotely resembling marketing imperatives.” Simon Leser on translating a doggedly anonymous author who publishes under the pseudonym Joseph Andras. | Lit Hub
Russ Thomas goes searching for queer protagonists in crime fiction. | CrimeReads
The verdict on Kazuo Ishiguro’s latest, Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Sympathizer sequel, a biography of Tom Stoppard, and more of the Reviews You Need to Read This Week. | Book Marks
“In Strayed’s hands, the advice column was a radical therapeutic experience, less like ‘Hints from Heloise’ and more like downing a cup of ayahuasca.” Looking for answers in the age of peak advice. | The New Yorker
What does the merger of Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster mean for the book industry as a whole? | The New York Times
“I don’t have the emotional and intellectual energy to give to these shadowy people to bring them out of the shadows.” How lockdown is stifling the creativity of writers. | The Guardian
How literary titan Toni Morrison transformed book publishing forever and nurtured the talents of Black authors. | ZORA
Remembering Bay Area author Anthony Veasna So, and the variety of lives he changed. | n+1
“As a writer, I understand how things go from thought to paper. You meet this character you’ve created in your head, and you get to keep revisiting it.” Stacey Abrams on her new thriller and why she stopped using a pseudonym. | Variety
R.O. Kwon examines the all-too-common conflation of kink with abuse. | The Cut
“The big thing is always thinking about who we are missing.” Introducing the new wave of powerful executives and editors of color in publishing. | Vulture
“Resistance must be remade and reimagined for each new political moment.” Eula Biss considers the multiplicity of resistance. | The Paris Review
“It was the first time I ever talked about HIV without gesturing toward dark conclusions.” Danez Smith on the relationship that returned the possibility of pleasure to them. | GQ
“The system is untenable, and mothers cannot continue to live this way.” On the rise of the (literal) monster mom in fiction. | Electric Literature
“How limitless our love for one another can be with our guards down.” Hanif Abdurraqib on friendship, community, and the cultural significance of sp ades. | New York Times Magazine
Christopher Schaberg’s argument for slowing down and reading one book with students per semester. | Inside Higher Ed
“We live in a country that is obsessed with beauty, youth and success, but all that diminishes and eventually ends.” Isabel Allende discusses feminism, her new book, and the idea of home. | Los Angeles Times
These books show the state of environmental racism in the US—and efforts to address it. | EcoWatch

Also on Lit Hub:

Mary Gordon tries to understand Patricia Lockwood • Yaba Blay on the history of race in New Orleans • Why we hover over our sleeping newborns • Sushma Subramanian on the paradox of solitude and intimacy • Dreux Richard attends the Japan Firefly Society’s national conference • Julia Fine on writing Margaret Wise Brown into her novel • Elizabeth Becker on three women who changed the face of war reportage • On the political work of Mark Maryboy • How genetic sequencing exonerated an Olympian accused of doping • Matthew Gavin Frank recommends 11 books with things that take flight • Rebecca Carroll reflects on parenting a Black son in white America • On the dangers of the legal system relying too heavily on neuroscience • How Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa played a role in the late Enlightenment • Jonathan Lethem on the brilliance of Shirley Jackson • Georgina Lawton on learning the truth about her biological lineage • Daphne Brooks remembers blues activist Rosetta Reitz • Hermione Lee considers the algorithmic genius of Arcadia • A brief history of Rapture novels • On the underrepresentation of HIV+ characters in YA lit • James Canton communes with an 800-year-old oak tree • Elizabeth Miki Brina embraces the differences between Japanese and American culture • Alicia Andrzejewski on the (semi-hidden) history of queer pregnancy in literature • Li Juan on why China’s Kazakh herders are giving up a life of migration • Catherine Rottenberg on the overdue revival of Anzia Yezierska • A reading list for taking fashion seriously • Feast your eyes on the best book covers of the month • Angela Buck recommends nine books of seductive nightmares

Best of Book Marks:

“The world is full of painful stories. Sometimes it seems as though there aren’t any other kind”: on Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower • Station Eleven, LaRose, How to Be Both, and more rapid-fire book recs from K Chess • A month of literary listening: AudioFile’s best audiobooks of February • New titles by Hermione Lee, Yaniv Iczkovits, and Jennifer Ryan all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week