TODAY: In 1973, Pearl S. Buck, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature “for her rich and truly epic descriptions of peasant life in China and for her biographical masterpieces,” dies.
- Twitter and Facebook, all in one: how Chinese “netizens” stay one step ahead of the state on Weibo. | Literary Hub
- Celebrities are basically teenagers—just look at their poetry. | Literary Hub
- Philip Boehm, translator of Nobel Prize winners, on the ever-growing need for empathy through the stories of others. | Literary Hub
- A life of quite desperation: not just for broody men! On Big Little Lies and complicated women. | Literary Hub
- “Somebody’s truth is always someone else’s lie. What matters more is how history speaks to the present.” An interview with Chris Kraus. | SSENSE
- A profile of Rebecca Solnit, a “master of exposing the malevolent underbelly of everyday situations.” | Elle
- “A great writer mimicking, on the page, the dynamic energy of human thought is about as close as we can get to modelling pure empathy.” George Saunders on the writing of Grace Paley. | The New Yorker
- Beware the danger of what I call Feminism Lite: A profile of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and excerpt from her forthcoming book, Dear Ijeawele. | The Guardian
- Eula Biss on understanding the story in numbers, the limits and possibilities of language, and the sentimental manipulation of facts. | BLARB
- It’s kinda like a post-millennial remake of The Bell Jar on the CW Network: Haley Cullingham, Safy-Hallan Farah, Larissa Pham, Sarah Nicole Prickett discuss Cat Marnell’s memoir, How to Murder Your Life. | Hazlitt
- “I no longer feel like I’m just a number—I now have a voice.” Three pieces from The Pen-City Writers, a literary journal created by the students of the first creative writing course offered at maximum-security prison in southern Texas. | VICE
