TODAY: In 1984, Chester Himes dies at 75.
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Get to know this year’s National Book Award finalists. | Lit Hub
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“Our teeth tell stories about us, about the way that we have lived, about where we come from, about our habits, our health, and status.” Angelique Stevens muses on dentistry, poverty, and inequality. | Lit Hub Memoir
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Ryan Holiday on using the lessons of stoicism to survive opening a small-town bookstore mid-pandemic. | Lit Hub Philosophy
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Kevin Wilson’s Now is Not the Time to Panic, Lynn Steger Strong’s Flight, and Hugh Bonneville’s Playing Under the Piano all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. | Book Marks
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Lavie Tidhar on the best (and friendliest) robots in science fiction. | CrimeReads
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On the picket line with the unionizing employees of HarperCollins: “Publishing has long been a low paying industry with long hours for its entry and midlevel employees.” | The New York Times
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How do we understand the state of American politics today? These books might help. | The Atlantic
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“Translating fiction allowed me to channel another kind of creativity, to have those voices in my head.” A conversation between Monique Ilboudo and her translator, Yarri Kamara. | Words Without Borders
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Haruki Murakami reflects on writing in a foreign language: “I learned that there was no need for a lot of difficult words—I didn’t have to try to impress people with beautiful turns of phrase.” | The Guardian
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“It’s tempting to imagine that the talented young Mary shut herself away in her chamber and began to write her teenaged heart out.” Bryan VanDyke on Mary Shelley’s journals and the non-linearity of creativity. | The Millions
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Read a newly translated Annie Ernaux story. | The New Yorker
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Get a first look at the TV adaptation of Octavia Butler’s Kindred. | Vanity Fair
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“As in all imaginative literature—all fiction, perhaps—the story represents at once the persistence of childhood and a memorial to its loss.” Andrea Long Chu on The Velveteen Rabbit. | Vulture
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Carolina A. Miranda explores a Joan Didion-inspired art exhibit at the Hammer Museum: “It is not composed of vitrines bursting with manuscripts. Nor are there old ashtrays or a favored typewriter.” | Los Angeles Times
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This NaNoWriMo, why not write a really bad novel? | Slate
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“Why do living artists subsist on part-time gigs while dead ones become immersive money-printing machines for corporate enterprise?” Abbey Fenbert on Van Gogh and the exploitation of artistic labor. | Catapult
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Stephanie McCarter discusses her approach to translating the sexual violence of classical poetry. | The Washington Post
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Phillip Vance Smith, II, the incarcerated editor of The Nash News in North Carolina, discusses his life at the prison newspaper. | JSTOR Daily
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“If moralizing is now misplaced in literature, what space is there to write about imperiled people, except to set them up as subjects for recreational grieving?” Nazish Brohi reflects on storytelling and the limits of empathy. | Guernica
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“I find myself thinking about Joe Brainard whenever I listen to ‘All Too Well.’” JoAnna Novak on the power of writing in the present tense. | The Paris Review
Also on Lit Hub:
Celebrating 100 years of the great Kurt Vonnegut • Why Laura van den Berg took up boxing • Four Ukranian writers speak to literature, solidarity, and the future of justice • Lynn Steger Strong’s summer of Faludi and Knausgaard • Why you should write a novel with friends • Hugh Bonneville reflects on his indomitable Downton Abbey castmate Maggie Smith • Veronica Roth on becoming the best writer you can be • How Atlanta made hip-hop • Qian Julie Wang on zou, or the act of leaving • Lessons on community from a father reading Dostoyevsky • Reading the power dynamics of gender in Ovid’s Metamorphoses • How Harold and the Purple Crayon resisted uniformity • The devastating losses that made Geronimo into a legendary war commander • Why write about women who kill? • “I remember the day when pie became my savior.” • What Onyi Nwabineli’s learned about writing grief in fiction • Sarah Fawn Montgomery considers what mirrors really tell us • How human curiosity unlocked the secrets of the universe • A brief history of shipwrecks in literature • On the meteoric rise of Christiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi • Tree Abraham on a lifelong love of cycling • Shanita Hubbard on the sexual harassment that Black women and girls endure • How much should a memoir reveal?