TODAY: In 1907, Violette LeDuc is born; her first novel, L’Asphyxie (In the Prison of Her Skin), was published by Albert Camus and earned her praise from Jean-Paul Sartre, Jean Cocteau and Jean Genet.
- How does she do it? Joy Williams may actually employ magic in her writing—Vicent Scarpa takes a closer look. | Literary Hub
- Novelist-turned-showrunner Philipp Meyer is very quotable: “You’re either born an artist or you’re not.” | Literary Hub
- Marriage is tough. But writing a book with your spouse? How. | Literary Hub
- Kim McLarin battles through depression: “White people listened to Prozac. Black people listened to their mother.” | Literary Hub
- From aubade to epigram: on the origins of essential poetic terms. | Literary Hub
- The 5 best-reviewed books of the week, from a biography of Nixon to a Great Gatsby reboot. | Book Marks
- “When I read her the old fairy tales about daughters without mothers, I worried that I was pushing on the bruises of her loss. When I read her the old fairy tales about stepmothers, I worried I was reading her an evil version of myself.” Leslie Jamison on becoming a stepmother. | The New York Times Magazine
- The American Academy of Arts and Letters has announced the 19 winners of their 2017 awards in literature, including Paul Beatty, Safiya Sinclair, and Dana Spiotta. | American Academy of Arts and Letters
- On the new anthology Double Bind and women’s ambition, “at once deeply idiosyncratic and indicative of larger cultural forces.” | The New Yorker
- “In a way, I think a lot of us are in kind of a state of relief, because for the first time in such a long time, the cultural elite and liberals and the more general population seem to be a lot more concerned.” Rahawa Haile speaks with Valeria Luiselli about her new book, Tell Me How it Ends. | Rolling Stone
- Deb Olin Unferth on googling “how to write a novel,” Steinian repetition, and the lifeblood of philosophy. | Electric Literature
- “To the extent that narrative is still with us, it seems to manifest itself via plausibility, a quality, and syntax, a quantity.” Lucy Ives on the news, trolls, and evolving story forms. | Harriet
- It’s about getting away clean: Rethinking the ending of Goodbye, Columbus. | The Paris Review
And on Literary Hub: The week’s news in literary film and TV • Reading Across America: launching a reading series in Queens • Read a new short story from Edie Meidav.
