TODAY: In 1899, French actress Sarah Bernhardt premieres an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet with herself in the title role.
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“We’re holding the city. Ukrainian flags are fluttering above it.” From Kharkiv, Serhiy Zhadan records the first month of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. | Lit Hub
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When Arthur Conan Doyle got pranked by a couple of schoolgirls. | Lit Hub
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“It’s an underdog story if ever there was one.” Matthew Shindell looks at how Mars became central to the stories we tell about ourselves. | Lit Hub Space!
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Exploding shrimp and luminous fangs: What William Beebe found at the bottom of the ocean. | Lit Hub Nature
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Emma Cline’s The Guest, Jonathan Eig’s King: A Life, and T.C. Boyle’s Blue Skies all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. | Book Marks
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The writers’ strike has begun to visibly affect Netflix, which, fittingly, is one of the strike’s main targets. | The New York Times
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Alicia Andrzejewski looks at bad mothers in literature. | Boston Globe
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“Everywhere you go, you are surrounded by the products of labor. Every clean sidewalk, every polished hallway, every blade of cut grass. Our world cannot function without them, and yet the laborer remains unseen and unheard.” Jamil Jan Kochai on the deterioration of the American dream. | The New Yorker
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How Cafe Yafa is keeping Palestinian literature alive. | Al-Jazeera
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Meet the moms at the center of Florida’s book banning fight. | LA Times
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“Now I am sitting here in the US, I have to look at the extraordinary attack on libraries, and books for children in schools.” Salman Rushdie is concerned about censorship in the West. | Scroll
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Gal Beckerman profiles East German-born Jenny Erpenbeck. | The Atlantic
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“It’s the most mind-blowing, soul-stirring, literary masterpiece I’ve ever laid my eyes on!” Or what happens when ChatGPT writes blurbs for classic literature. | The Guardian
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Emma Cline and Louise Bonnet talk Highsmith, Cheever, and eating asses (in a plane crash). | Interview Magazine
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If you loved the books on the International Booker Prize shortlist, here are the films you should watch. | The Booker Prize
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The PEN Ukraine executive board has responded to The Atlantic’s reporting on Masha Gessen’s resignation from the PEN America board. | PEN Ukraine
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The woman who coined the term “safetyism” has created a safe space for people who *feel* canceled (or, like, they *could* get canceled). | The New Yorker
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The only shopping list we want to read is Samantha Irby’s. | The Strategist
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Psychology Today asking (and answering) the hard questions: Can I be friends with people who don’t read books? | Psychology Today
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“People don’t know what datelines mean.” Behold “enhanced bylines” in the New York Times. | Nieman Lab
Also on Lit Hub:
Samantha Irby takes the Lit Hub Questionnaire (and makes us laugh) • Abraham Verghese on marrying medicine with literature • Emma Cline recommends baths as productive procrastination • Why the Spanish Civil War mattered to writers on distant shores • On the “most horrible, vexed, unspeakable subject in the history of English literature”—Shakespeare’s identity • Luis Jaramillo on the unlikely discovery of an old family recipe • Tim Mohr on being the translator and being translated • A call for returning to a more radical approach to the reproductive movement • From Hamlet to The Sound of Music, what makes meta-performances so compelling? • What animation can do for Murakami adaptations that live action films cannot • Emily Wells considers celebrity patient Augustine Gleizes, chronic illness, and the male medical gaze • Matthew Binder on making sense of an absurd world • Jane Wong on poetic ambivalence • Anne Berest on collecting the stories of elders • Breanne Mc Ivor against altering Caribbean fiction for American audiences • Obsessing over UFO videos • Read the winning poems of the 92 Street Y Discovery Contest • Jolene McIlwain on rural America and storytelling • Daisy Florin on creating fictional structures to write about troubling experiences • Cassandra Jackson on the invisibility of fertility treatments • How screenwriting can help you write stronger fiction