TODAY: In 1933, Philip Roth is born.
- In part two of our series The Longest Year: 2020, Marvin Heiferman reflects on documenting his grief on Instagram after the sudden loss of his husband. | Lit Hub
- “One of the symptoms of racism is that you get all lumped together.” Cathy Park Hong on the recent upsurge in anti-Asian racism. | The Atlantic
- “To try to be who they were, or who they wanted to be, was not easy.” Paulina Bren on how the Barbizon Hotel gave Sylvia Plath and Joan Didion the freedom to write. | Lit Hub
- INTERVIEW WITH AN INDIE PRESS: The New Press editors talk about what it means to work at the intersection of publishing and social justice. | Lit Hub
- “Our pact provided more than a deadline and a sense of obligation and sympathy: it ensured an audience, even if it was an audience of one.” How Margaret Hermes finally finished her book… after four decades. | Lit Hub
- “We think of libraries as being about books or even literacy. But they’re really about sharing.” Jamie Vander Broek compares the library and the museum. | Lit Hub
- “Lewis shows Americans something about themselves that some of the broader American culture—even white culture, with all its blinkered ignorance and denial about the persistence and depth of racism—was beginning to hunger for.” A conversation about Southern chef Edna Lewis’ legacy. | Lit Hub Food
- “Doesn’t Texas crime fiction deserve a cool new title of its own?” Rod Davis on Texas Noir. | CrimeReads
- New titles from Nona Fernández, Jo Ann Beard, and Glenn Frankel all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. | Book Marks
- Just in time for the Audie Awards, watch YA audiobook judges Jerry Craft, Melissa de la Cruz, and V.E. Schwab discuss what goes into selecting the winner. | Lit Hub
- “What a relief it is that this gay Black man is someone we as a community and a country did not discard several years ago.” Morgan Jerkins on Don Lemon’s memoir. | GEN
- WATCH: An evening with The Rumpus and Barrelhouse, featuring Kaveh Akbar, Cortney Lamar Charleston, Danielle Evans, Melissa Febos, Christopher Gonzalez, and Megan Stielstra. | Lit Hub Virtual Book Channel
- Well, that’s nice: online writing groups have been thriving during the pandemic. | New York Times
- “The thing about prophets, even bad prophets, was that they were always in search of an audience. They were hungry and deprived.” Read a new short story by Brandon Taylor. | Joyland
- Reading this year’s NBCC Award finalists: Tara Wanda Merrigan on Maggie Doherty’s The Equivalents. | Lit Hub
- “They are remarkably unfiltered, reveling in the murkiness of sex, anxiety, and body image, bringing light to the gloriously unglamorous facets of the female experience.” On the new wave of Instagram poets. | Bustle
- Alissa Wilkinson spoke with Emily St. John Mandel, David France, and others whose work took on new significance in light of the pandemic. | Vox
- Kazuo Ishiguro on the ways that his relationship to songwriting and music “define[s] my decisions as a novelist.” | NPR
Also on Lit Hub: Nige Tassell on the Coen brothers’ cinematic sleight of hand • Alejandro Ruiz remembers the dishes of his Oaxaca childhood • Read Souvankham Thammavongsa’s story, “Life Is Awful,” from NOON magazine