TODAY: In 1921, Patricia Highsmith is born.
- “To really engage with craft is to engage with how we know each other,” and 24 other notes on craft from Matthew Salesses. | Lit Hub Craft
- Daniel Allen Cox on redefining Armageddon—during a global pandemic—after growing up among Jehovah’s Witnesses. | Lit Hub
- Say hello to the Best American Series 2021 editors: Jesmyn Ward, Ed Yong, and more. | The Hub
- Happy birthday, Patricia Highsmith! To celebrate, we’re (vicariously?) reliving her days at Yaddo, featuring 48-hour hangovers. | Lit Hub
- “Borrowing Virginia Woolf’s concept in A Room of One’s Own, I thought that this collection of stories could be the first book of their own.” Houzan Mahmoud on creating an anthology of Kurdish women’s stories. | Lit Hub
- Tyler Stovall considers the long history behind “freedom” meaning “white freedom.” | Lit Hub History
- In honor of her 100th, a look back at Patricia Highsmith’s malcontents, misogynists, and murders. | Book Marks
- Garth Greenwell talks Balzac, Giovanni’s Room, and fiction’s greatest orgasm. | Book Marks
- More than 250 editors, agents, writers, and other members of the literary community signed an open letter urging publishers not to give book deals to former members of the Trump administration. | Los Angeles Times
- Helga Weyhe, Germany’s oldest bookseller, has died at the age of 98. | The New York Times
- “A lie is a fiction made up to take away someone else’s power.” On fake news, propaganda, and other uses of fiction. | Guernica
- Two weeks after it entered the public domain, different versions of The Great Gatsby are already proliferating online—including The Great Gritty, in which all instances of “Gatsby” are replaced by “Gritty,” and another in which everything is the same except Tom and Gatsby kiss. | Vice
- “I felt as though I was following after an alluring, expansive, and emphatic spirit, racing to keep up as she sped forward.” Tracy K. Smith on translating Yi Lei. | McSweeney’s
- How did the Civil War get its name? | JSTOR Daily
- “In fiction writing, imagination creates empathy. Like organizing, writing fiction requires that you get to know people intimately.” On the connection between Stacey Abrams’ art and activism. | Bustle
- On “solastalgia,” the grief of living on an actively dying planet. | The Markaz Review
Also on Lit Hub: The week in virtual book events, featuring Matthew Salesses, Robert Jones Jr., EJ Koh, and more • “Floaters,” a new poem by Martín Espada • Read from Sara Moss’s new novel, Summerwater.