TODAY: In 1916, Italian novelist and short story writer Natalia Ginzburg, who secretly edited an anti-Fascist newspaper during World War II, is born.
- A night in the Virginia Woolf suite at America’s weirdest literary hotel. | Literary Hub
- The Cold War’s not over yet: 10 great spy thrillers that could be New York Times’ headlines. | Literary Hub
- You will read this defense of writing in the second person. You will enjoy it. | Literary Hub
- A sleepy little murdertown called Reykjavik: on Iceland’s burgeoning crime fiction scene. | Literary Hub
- “The impact of what Mr. Spiegelman has done here is so complex and self-contradictory that it nearly defies analysis.” A 1986 review of Art Spiegelman’s Maus. | Book Marks
- Chinese dissident and writer Liu Xiaobo, who “learned to challenge received wisdom of every kind, keeping for himself only the ideas that could pass the test of rigorous independent examination,” has died at 61. | The New York Review of Books, The Washington Post
- “This moment is a gift. But platitudes / Like these are full of shit.” Two poems by Rowan Ricardo Phillips. | The Nation
- A tour of crime novelist (and former P.I.) Don Winslow’s Southern California ranch. | The New York Times
- “They called it Shiva, though the body wasn’t there.” Lynn Steger Strong on mourning and motherhood. | The Millions
- A refreshing vision of revolutionary change and justice: on turning to Gershom Scholem’s work on Jewish mysticism in a time of political turmoil. | The Paris Review
- Dana Canedy has been named the next administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes, the first woman and first person of color to hold the position. | Poynter
- Why artist Tim Youd is retyping every word of The Talented Mr. Ripley on the same typewriter model that Patricia Highsmith used. | Interview
Also on Lit Hub: Some odd news this week in literary film and TV · New fiction from Gunnhild Øyehaug’s collection, Knots · Read from Sally Rooney’s new novel, Conversations with Friends.
