Lit Hub Daily: April 18, 2017

TODAY: In 1947, Kathy Acker is born. 

• David Grann on the atrocities of the Osage Indian Murders, and taking true crime to the big screen. | Literary Hub
• Vivian Gornick never talked about writing with Grace Paley (and other memories) · Grace Paley on the tragic reality of illegal abortion · Teaching Grace Paley: “If you say what’s on your mind, you’ll probably say something beautiful” · “The only hope for the USA lies in certain of its dissidents.” Angela Carter on the short stories of Grace Paley. | Literary Hub, Book Marks
• Louise Glück has a hard time caring about the difference between “realism” and “fantasy.” | Literary Hub
• Alvaro Enrigue finds a little hope for America on a snow day in Harlem. | Literary Hub
• Margot Singer: from 9/11 to Guantanamo Bay, undergoing a political conversion on the way to a novel. | Literary Hub
• “She is also living proof that the only hope for the USA. . . lies in certain of its dissidents.” Angela Carter on the short stories of Grace Paley. | Book Marks
• I think comedy is a great vehicle for spreading the bad news about who we are: Tracy O’Neill interviews Fiona Maazel. | BOMB Magazine
• Deirdre Coyle on finally reading David Foster Wallace after “having this man’s work recommended to you, over and over, by men who have talked over you, talked down to you, coerced you into certain things, physically forced you into others, and devalued your opinion in ways too subtle to be worth explaining.” | Electric Literature
• On 19th-century polar fiction, an “unusual genre” encompassing works by Mary Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe, Jules Verne, and Charles Dickens, and our enduring obsession with the Arctic. | The New Yorker
• “I knew that I wanted to write fiction, and I knew that I wanted to produce innovative scholarship, but I did not know how to do either of those things.” Viet Thanh Nguyen on the struggles and doubts of writing. | Los Angeles Times
• Pamela Paul recommends “finding a book that affronts you, and staring it down to the last word.” | The New York Times
• I always say that I fell in love with literature reading the Latin-American writers: Interviews with Man Booker International Prize nominees Samanta Schweblin and Megan McDowell. | Words Without Borders
• “History can’t bring justice to cases where murderers went free and the victims’ stories weren’t told. What you want is an accounting, for the victims’ stories to be recorded, and for the perpetrators to be named and identified for posterity.” An interview with David Grann. | MEL Magazine

Also on Lit Hub: On the writing of Scholastique Mukasonga and Svetlana Alexievich, bearing witness · Five Books Making News: the FBI, friendship, and father-daughter duos · New fiction from Sofia Samatar, from her brand new story collection.

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