TODAY: In 1868, French poet and dramatist Edmond Eugène Alexis Rostand, best-known for his 1897 play Cyrano de Bergerac, is born.
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Carley Moore on the joys of writing a serialized novel. | Lit Hub
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Crime programming stages a takeover in April’s literary film and TV (but Austen makes an appearance, too!). | Lit Hub Film & TV
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“His gentle optimism and lighthearted humor are opiates for the masses desperate to have their worldviews confirmed.” Ariella Garmaise considers the cloying moral universe of Michael Schur. | Lit Hub Criticism
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The case for letting kids come up with their own bedtime stories, even when things go off the rails. | Lit Hub Parenting
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“Every book is the wreck of a perfect idea.” Aimee Bender recommends writing without a plan. | Lit Hub Craft
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Naomi Klein on the resilience of Egyptian activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah, “the revolution’s toughest critic and its most devoted militant.” | Lit Hub
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10 new crime novels to read in April. | CrimeReads
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New titles by Anne Tyler, NoViolet Bulawayo, and Elena Ferrante all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Month. | Book Marks
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Joan Neuberger on what “poetic truth” means in a time of war in Ukraine. | Los Angeles Review of Books
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“I love artists undone by posterity, magnificent failures, writers who are ignored, forgotten, mocked or proscribed for being who they were when they were.” Robert Clark on Hart Crane. | Image
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Preti Taneja considers the work that welcomed her, and craft as “the emancipation of a way of seeing.” | Granta
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The New York Public Library’s decision to end late fees has led to a wave of returns (along with apology notes). | The New York Times
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“Hardwick understood that the expression of judgment was an act of persuasion, not coercion.” Merve Emre on Elizabeth Hardwick and the responsibilities of the literary critic. | The New York Review of Books
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Greta Thunberg will publish a book this fall with new writing on the climate crisis from more than 100 contributors. | The Guardian
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Ian Wang reviews Kogonada’s adaptation of an Alexander Weinstein short story and its “narrative structured by social stratification, yet largely absent of its markers.” | The Baffler
Also on Lit Hub: Maria Albano on the star of My Brilliant Friend’s third season • C.A. Davids on Langston Hughes’s connection to African literature • Read from Selim Özdogan’s newly translated novel, 52 Factory Lane (tr. Ayça Türkoğlu and Katy Derbyshire)