The Best of the Literary Internet, Every Day
TODAY: In 1940, 22-year-old Carson McCullers’ first novel, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, is published.
- Did medieval people care about their birth charts? Maybe not, but they did look to the stars for answers. | Lit Hub History
- “When I go to the page to write, I think of only the story at hand—that to write is to find some truth about what it means to be human.” Jane Ciabattari talks to Morgan Talty about writing a Native American novel that subverts expectations. | Lit Hub In Conversation
- Lucy Sante, Tom Lee, and more remember Arthur Russell’s “amazingly explicit” disco classic, “Is It All Over My Face?” | Lit Hub Music
- Julie Satow on the early career of Geraldine Stutz, future icon of fashion and business: “While inexperienced, Geraldine had preternatural confidence for her age and obvious flair.” | Lit Hub Style
- “Eventually the storm is over. Like any passion or disaster, it must always pass.” Christiana Spens on “The Ballad of Sir Patrick Spens.” | Lit Hub Criticism
- Chukwuebuka Ibeh, Claire Kilroy, and more! These 26 new books are out now. | Lit Hub Reading Lists
- “Caring about is to caring for as grief is to mourning. We can care about those we aren’t caring for. We can care for people we don’t care about.” Amy Kurtzweil on mourning during a time of global grief. | Lit Hub Memoir
- “Slanting sunlight from the open door filled the single room of Ted’s cabin.” Read from Maxim Loskutoff’s new novel, Old King. | Lit Hub Fiction
- What does it actually mean to be Kafkaesque? Whatever it means, it’s ubiquitous. | The Guardian
- “Motherhood has created new community in some ways, but also it has restricted me to certain spaces where I’m expected to be exclusively in kinship with other parents, specifically mothers.” Emily Raboteau and Manjula Martin in conversation. | Los Angeles Review of Books
- AI book knockoffs might be commanding the spotlight, but don’t forget about good old fashioned regular scam books (that are also sold on Amazon). | 404 Media
- Lydia Davis describes the rare pleasure of “absolute, unbroken darkness.” | The Yale Review
- Climate scientists are examining nineteenth century whaling logbooks to learn about shifts in global wind patterns. | Smithsonian Magazine
- “The UC system’s unionized graduate workers, postdocs, and researchers are now on strike over the events of April 30 and May 1…” School might be out, but solidarity actions at universities continue. | Jacobin
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