TODAY: In 1900, Zelda Fitzgerald, neé Sayre, is born.
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An unknown genius with a trunk full of poems: Richard Zenith on the mysteries and identities of Fernando Pessoa. | Lit Hub Biography
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“I arrive now at the end of this journey with a finished film that I’ll happily admit cannot do justice to the well from which it’s drawn.” David Lowery on adapting The Green Knight from a poem that resists adaptation. | Lit Hub Film
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Protective fragrances and plebian scents: Sarah Everts presents a brief history of perfume. | Lit Hub History
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Bex O’Brian in praise of the mother who “barely raised” her. | Lit Hub Memoir
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Katie Kitamura’s Intimacies, Omar El Akkad’s What Strange Paradise, Hermione Hoby’s Virtue, and Rachel Yoder’s Nightbitch all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. | Book Marks
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Samantha Downing recommends ten thrillers full of style, plot, and dark humor. | CrimeReads
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On the big business of literary adaptations for television. | The Atlantic
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“After we’re done worrying, we must change the way we buy books.” On the alarming implications of Amazon’s ever-growing share of the bookselling market. | Medium
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Dine like Jane Austen with these recipes from her sister-in-law’s cookbook. | Atlas Obscura
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“I hate to tell you this, but this is not going to be the end of Trump books, no matter what.” Alex Shephard looks at the (seemingly endless) Trump era of book publishing. | New York Magazine
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What does it mean to be Latino? Héctor Tobar investigates the term on a 9,000-mile road trip across the country. | Harper’s
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A reading list for Disability Pride Month. | CLMP
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“Lately, I’ve been thinking that what drives so much of the anger and antagonism online is our helplessness offline.” Roxane Gay on the unpleasant side of social media engagement. | New York Times
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Hilton Als on the silence and possibilities of Speedboat. | Granta
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Richard Mirabella reflects on trying to become a writer while holding down a day job. | Catapult
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“We either invent and institute a better way, or a mass extinction will take us down with it.” Kim Stanley Robinson discusses the link between utopian fiction and climate change. | The Nation
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Mother Monsters: On the portrayal of motherhood in Nightbitch and The Upstairs House. | Bitch
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Inside the artistic process of poet William Blake, “a masterful engraver, prolific illustrator, innovative designer, and an artist of astonishing originality.” | Lapham’s Quarterly
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Anne Helen Petersen considers meritocracy traps, student debt, and predatory graduate programs across the country. | Culture Study
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Tommy Orange profiles Wes Studi, “the biggest star we’ve ever had in the Native acting world.” | GQ
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Five people have been arrested in Hong Kong as part of a police crackdown on political speech in books for young readers. | The New York Times
Also on Lit Hub:
How Oscar Wilde won over the American press • Carole Hooven on the role of hormones in human speech • Conversations with strangers on a cross-country train • Miljenko Jergović considers the visible erasure of Croatian Jews • Elie Honig on the “feigned ignorance” of William Barr • A more interesting way to talk about the line between a writer’s life and their fiction • Rachel Yoder on navigating chronic pain through storytelling • On the Gilded Age women “sex radicals” who fought back against Anthony Comstock • Thad Ziolkowsk on returning to New York’s waves on September 12, 2001 • Stories from the Playboy Bunny Resort • Lauren Markham and Jeff Frost on California’s endless season of heat • What it was like to walk on the moon in 1971 • “Faux meats are not progress, they are a distraction” • On the 1983 kung fu film that sparked the genesis of the Wu-Tang Clan • How we (mis)treat mental illness • Geoff Rodkey on accepting the realities of civilization-ending calamity • Why negative descriptors tend to outlast their positive counterparts • Athena Dixon on family legacies and the long reach of addiction • Toward a syllabus of modern grieving • K.E. Semmel on translating Mathilde Walter Clark’s Lone Star • Matt Mitchell on building his own intersex canon of poetry, with the help of Freaks and Geeks • How American textbooks misrepresent the struggle for racial justice • Gail Scott on lit-crit’s underestimation of female genius • Cedar Sigo on Eileen Myles and the “poet’s novel” • Geoffrey Hilsabeck on the dizzying dream of Vaudeville