TODAY: In 1928, Radclyffe Hall’s novel The Well of Loneliness is published by Jonathan Cape in London. (Later that year, it is convicted on the grounds of obscenity due to its theme of lesbian love.)
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Ideas can come from anywhere, writes TJ Klune—including from a googly-eyed Roomba. | Lit Hub Craft & Advice
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“I didn’t understand that I was experiencing the magnified danger of being a Native-looking woman traveling alone through what some people call “fly-over country.” Sofia Ali-Khan considers how colonialism and patriarchy create enduring misery for Native American women. | Lit Hub Politics
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Antonio Padilla unveils the inner workings of black holes, “a place where there is literally no tomorrow, where the future does not exist.” | Lit Hub Space!
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What have pollsters learned from their mistakes in the 2016 election? | Lit Hub
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When women proved that math wasn’t a “man’s job.” | Lit Hub History
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Small town gossip and suspense: Liz Alterman on whispers, rumors, and thrillers. | CrimeReads
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“The prize is set to expand to three categories, filling a gap left by the demise of the Costa book awards.” The Rathbones Folio Prize announces this year’s judges—and a few changes. | The Guardian
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Carmen Maria Machado on ego, writing careers, and waiting to debut: “The business end of writing is unavoidable, if you want people to read your work. But you must resist it, until you’re ready.” | Substack
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A look at the 135-year history of Esperanto. | Smithsonian Magazine
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“His inability to stop writing has resulted in a voice that has spoken in an almost unbroken tenor across some 15 strange and brilliant books.” Merve Emre on Gerald Murnane. | The New Yorker
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Eleanor Johnson considers the horror and humor of Beowulf. | Public Books
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Alissa Redmond on the online trolls that are trying to shut down her independent bookstore—and how she’s fighting back. | The Charlotte Observer
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Book Soup, a beloved West Hollywood bookstore, has organized a union. | Los Angeles Times
Also on Lit Hub: On Claude Simon’s classic nouveau roman, The Flanders Road, and the possibilities of fragmented narrative • How to read to children: A brief guide from Phillip Done • Read from Dwyer Murphy’s debut novel, An Honest Living