TODAY: In 1920, Federico García Lorca’s first play, “The Butterfly’s Evil Spell” (El maleficio de la mariposa) is poorly received at its première in Madrid.
- “There was a significant group of people who did not like my talk radio voice and haven’t been shy about letting me know: male sports fans.” Julie DiCaro on sexism in broadcast journalism. | Lit Hub Sports
- “We are just part of this strange scenario, like we are in a macabre opera and we don’t actually change anything.” Marina Abramović on the art of encountering the body. | Lit Hub
- A tourist in Paris: How Mark Twain documented an early transatlantic cruise in the age before selfies. | Lit Hub Travel
- “Where does a Black woman writer find her voice in an environment of double erasure?” Cheryl Thompson on finding space as a Black Canadian writer. | Lit Hub
- Five books you might’ve missed in February, featuring Zhou Haohui, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, and more. | Lit Hub Reading Lists
- Nadia Hashimi reflects on writing full stories about Afghan characters, which “become hooks from which readers hang their preconceived notions.” | Lit Hub
- “The spotting of a lyrical awkwardness in language had finally led me to meet an ‘alien’ craft.” Saikat Majumdar on navigating a polyglot’s life between Bangla and English. | Lit Hub
- Don Quixote, Franny and Zooey, Slaughterhouse-Five, and more rapid-fire book recs from Adam Levin. | Book Marks
- “Meditation teaches you that the story of you that you’ve been telling yourself your entire life is a fiction.” Emily Temple on the commodification of meditation. | The Italian Review
- A look at how early science fiction authors imagined climate change, a century before “cli-fi” had a name. | JSTOR Daily
- Sofia Lundberg reckons with childhood memories and their power to shape our futures. | Lit Hub
- “The excuse is always racist. And the man never has to face consequences for it.” Yasmin Tayag on the long history of the hypersexualization of Asian women. | GEN
- Reading this year’s NBCC Award finalists: Megan Labrise on Shayla Lawson’s This Is Major. | Lit Hub
- “Writing perpetrators out of all these narratives means that while the narratives pretend to have concern for victims, victims are not who they’re protecting.” Rebecca Solnit on misogyny, sexism, and victim blaming. | The Guardian
- Inside the struggle at the Strand, a legendary bookstore in New York City where workers say they have been disregarded and mistreated—especially during the pandemic. | Vulture
- “Instigating change will always mean reaching for what seems irrational or impossible in the moment.” Allegra Hyde on the power of collective effort. | Kenyon Review
Also on Lit Hub: Your week in virtual book events • Dan Davies on the rise and fall of eponymous schemer Charles Ponzi • Read from Marguerite Duras’s The Impudent Ones (trans. Kelsey L. Haskett)