TODAY: In 1793, Olympe de Gouges, French playwright and political activist whose feminist and abolitionist writings reached a large audience, is executed by guillotine.
- Kaveh Akbar: “Bewilderment is at the heart of every poem.” | Literary Hub
- Did the KKK shape modern comic book heroes? | Literary Hub
- Love and death in the Crescent City: C. Morgan Babst and Anne Gisleson on the writing life in New Orleans. | Literary Hub
- Ghosts, Gotham, and Germany: The best-reviewed books of the week. | Book Marks
- “People want to live whole, honest lives… where they believe in themselves and what they’re doing, which is so hard right now.” Malcolm Harris talks to Tony Tulathimutte. | Bookforum
- “Science fiction is one of the greatest and most effective forms of political writing. It’s all about the question, What if?” Watch Nnedi Okorafor’s TED talk on Afrofuturist narratives. | Tor
- “The decision to pursue music as a career proved a good one, but I was still curious about what we lost when he gave up writing fiction.” On Leonard Cohen’s literary career. | Hazlitt
- How Lord Byron invented the “wild” horse. | Literary Hub
- A playlist for these times: 10 songs for Franz Kafka’s The Trial. | Literary Hub
- In defense of distraction and work that embraces it (Tristam Shandy, the poetry of John Ashbery, and more). | Poetry Magazine
- “I started thinking about making it into a film when I was close to Grace’s age at the time of the murders, and now I’m almost the age Grace is at the end of the novel.” Sarah Polley on adapting Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace. | Vulture
- “God forbid women actually want something, especially if it has to do with sex.” R.O. Kwon and Alice Sola Kim discuss S&M, skincare, and short stories. | Playboy
- “How wonderful it would be, to wring ourselves of expectations, to suspend the need for visions and plans.” Short fiction by Claire Luchette. | Granta
