Lit Hub Daily: March 1, 2017

TODAY: In 1914, Ralph Waldo Ellison, author of Invisible Man, is born.

• Gish Jen on the deep differences between Chinese and American culture. | Literary Hub
• A history of violence: Katie Prout walks the blood-soaked shores of Spirit Lake, and considers an early American massacre. | Literary Hub
• If Hollywood runs out of books: 10 essays that would make great movies. | Literary Hub
• A close-reading of the greatest guest book in the world (and possibly history), in the most beautiful place in America. | Literary Hub
• Sam Lipsyte and George Saunders discuss preaching to the choir, combative compassion, and how narrators narrate themselves. | BOMB Magazine
• Your mouth, your mouth reinvents the word “mouth.” An excerpt from Melissa Febos’ essay collection, Abandon Me. | Tin House
• The revenge of the copy editors is upon us—and they call themselves ACES (American Copy Editors Society). | Columbia Journalism Review 
• “I really love books that are kind of thin, but sort of heavy… Books that seem like they took 10 years to write, but are almost like the notes for a book that is actually impossible.” An interview with Kate Zambreno. | The Creative Independent
• Hanya Yanagihara on the town of Karuizawa, “a Japanese dream of a particular kind of Western idyll, an idealized village convincingly radiating its own, sincere brand of gemutlichkeit.” | T Magazine
• Barack Obama and Michelle Obama have signed a book deal with Penguin Random House that “probably stretched into the tens of millions.” | The New York Times
• The recipients of this year’s Windham-Campbell Prizes, including André Alexis, Erna Brodber, and Marina Carr, have been announced. | Windham Campbell Prizes
• Internet-beloved actor Benedict Cumberbatch will star in a limited series based on Edward St. Aubyn’s Patrick Melrose novels. | Deadline
• What poetry provides, and has provided for centuries, is an introduction to language at its most urgent: On the poetics of emo music. | Alternative Press

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