TODAY: In 1883, Australian poet, essayist, novelist and painter Ethel Anderson is born.
- “I found myself straddling two very different identities, as a committed nun and as a woman experiencing myself as a sexual person for the first time.” Patricia M. Dwyer on the life-changing, “in-between” poetry of Elizabeth Bishop. | Lit Hub Criticism
- Paul Sen on the great uncertainty of Charles Darwin, who “never suspected that the mathematical equations of thermodynamics would torment him till his death.” | Lit Hub Science
- “We write knowing how futile it is. We write to keep alive a grief that refuses consolation.” Layla AlAmmar on the literature of revolution, ten years after the Arab Spring. | Lit Hub
- “The people of Plymouth Colony needed to determine not just guilt or innocence, but whether Peach and his coconspirators should be consigned to eternal damnation.” Tobey Pearl revisits America’s first blockbuster murder trial. | Lit Hub History
- W. Ralph Eubanks unravels the Southern myths of Mississippi’s Piney Woods, a Christ-haunted place “known for holding on to its frontier origins.” | Lit Hub
- Christina Baker Kline reads Lolita as a gothic horror novel. | CrimeReads
- “The Remains of the Day is a dream of a book.” A classic review of Kazuo Ishiguro’s achingly beautiful third novel. | Book Marks
- 14 new books for your springtime TBR pile. | The Hub
- Brandon Taylor on movie theaters, adjusting to life with a vaccine, and the activities that might never feel fully comfortable again. | The Cut
- Jessica Winter considers the default assumption of fiction-as-autofiction. | New York Times
- “All translation defines, erases, errs, selects, invents; sole authorship is a false prerequisite to place something in the category of art.” Janet Hendrickson on the process of translating a 17th-century Spanish dictionary into experimental prose poems. | Words Without Borders
- Reading this year’s NBCC Award finalists: Elizabeth Taylor on Les Payne and Tamara Payne’s Malcolm X. | Lit Hub
- “The problem of literacy can and must be addressed in a way that is built on an ethic of solidarity rather than elitism.” Marcus Gilroy-Ware on the complexity of illiteracy. | The Markaz Review
- “I spent most of my time writing the first draft bathed in cold flop sweat, but then when I sat down to analyze the poems, stories and novels I’d chosen, my training as a teacher kicked in.” Paisley Rekdal on writing a book about cultural appropriation. | Tupelo Quarterly
- Imbolo Mbue talks to Jane Ciabattari about writing her latest novel (since 2002!) and the post-colonial greed of the oil industry. | Lit Hub
- An oral history of bookselling in a pandemic: six indie bookstore owners reflect on the past year. | Washington Post
- “I’m a very furious and emotional woman, and when things pop up I have to talk about them, vocalise them, write about them, purge them.” Salena Godden on writing her new novel and grief. | The Guardian
Also on Lit Hub: Jenny Minton Quigley on the infamous book her father published: Lolita • Emily Lordi talks to Nona Hendryx about Afrofuturist histories • Read from Pola Oloixarac’s newly translated novel, Mona (trans. Adam Morris)