TODAY: In 1898, Matilda Joslyn Gage dies at 71.
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Ursula K. Le Guin’s son and literary executor, Theo Downes-Le Guin, reflects on why he decided to update language in her children’s books—and the note she left that guided his decision. | Lit Hub
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A more interesting autofiction: DK Nnuro examines how Black writers are “appropriating” their way into a literary movement. | Lit Hub Criticism
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“Book cataloguing is less an art, not really a science, and more of a completely unstandardized, decentralized carnival fire.” Oliver Darkshire on the rare book trade. | Lit Hub
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Why Oscar Wilde is a ghost twice over in Dublin. | Lit Hub History
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Idra Novey’s Take What You Need, Ann Napolitano’s Hello Beautiful, and Ghaith Abdul-Ahad’s A Stranger in Your Own City all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. | Book Marks
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Olivia Rutigliano has some questions about Guy Ritchie’s Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre. | CrimeReads
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Thirteen things you need to know about the longlisted books for the International Booker Prize. | The Booker Prize
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Would you steal hundreds of unpublished manuscripts simply for the pleasure of reading them? | The New York Times
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“I’m an absolute hobbit.” A profile of the genius Kelly Link. | Vulture
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“Sensitivity reading ‘on the fly’ is an invaluable tool for parents reading to children. It can even be a useful exercise for authors who revisit their work at a later stage. It is less helpful, I think, when it is used by commercial entities to obscure the cultural history of storytelling.” Jan Grue on the disabled villain and sensitivity reading. | The Guardian
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Here’s what travel writers think you should be packing on that trip you desperately need. | Travel & Leisure
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The Toni Morrison stamp is finally here! | CNN
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Sara Youngblood Gregory looks at femininity and gender roles in post-apocalypse narratives, from The Last of Us to Octavia Butler. | Cosmopolitan
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D.T. Max chronicles the many reinventions of H. G. Carrillo, a novelist whose writings on the malleable nature of identity made him a star in the world of contemporary Latino literature—until a family member’s correction to his obituary revealed that he wasn’t Latino after all. | The New Yorker
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“Coulette was, at least for formal poets, the first one who was entirely at home in the chaotic and rich diversity of Los Angeles.” Remembering Henri Coulette, a forgotten voice of Los Angeles. | Los Angeles Daily News
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“The Secret Garden emphasizes the interconnectedness of all of life, something I’ve never felt more aware of than in this perilous, plague-weary period.” Meaghan Mulholland reflects on reading The Secret Garden to her daughter while receiving treatment for Long COVID. | Electric Literature
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ChatGPT might be able to help with your science homework, but it still can’t pass English class. | The Toronto Star
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“Fosse grabs hold of us, intellectually and physiologically, and asks that we cleave to a state of mind largely lost to secular modernity: paying attention.” A deep dive on the great Jon Fosse. | The Point
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The week in book bans: Two people were arrested in Hong Kong for carrying children’s books · A Michigan school superintendent apologizes for randomly pulling LGBQT books from shelves · Parents are freaking out about “sexually explicit” books in Illinois · Angie Thomas’s The Hate U Give is… back on shelves in Mississippi! | The World But Mainly America
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Are all of Shakespeare’s plays about race? | The Atlantic
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Would you dump your fiancé if he wouldn’t read Middlemarch? Mona Simpson did. | The New York Times
Also on Lit Hub:
Why does Philip Roth matter now? • Ann Napolitano on self-doubt and loving basketball • Sarah Ruhl on bringing the words of Max Ritvo to the theater • Kate DiCamillo on seeing The Magician’s Elephant adapted for film • Jesse Lee Kercheval on Joyce Carol Oates and writing fiction based on life • Dani Shapiro revisits her craft book ten years later • Samuel Ligon considers the function of time in fiction (and life) • On racism and basketball in the 1970s • What to expect when you’re expecting a book • What the critics have to say about this year’s 30 NBCC Award finalists • Ghaith Abdul-Ahad looks behind the curtain of post-Saddam Iraq • Elizabeth McKenzie on writing about her geologist mother • Cathleen Schine on finding a charming narrator in a self-conscious age • Wendy Walker remembers a young Paul La Farge • Being the bass player for evangelism • Decoding the messages of trauma written in the skeletons of Argentina’s death flights victims • Is Gillian Anderson’s new anthology of women’s sexual fantasies too restrictive? • Visiting The Met Cloisters, Manhattan’s unlikely oasis of peace • Tracing the origins of James Lovelock, progenitor of Gaia theory • Why authenticity doesn’t exist in food • How China’s government continues to use COVID-19 as a front for totalitarianism, restriction, and surveillance • Veterinarian Karen Fine on coming to terms with performing euthanasia • A call for public acknowledgement in the face of sexual violence