LitHub Daily: December 15, 2016

TODAY: In 1896, Betty Smith, author of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, is born. 

• Pedro Almodovar professes his love for Alice Munro, the world sighs a little. | Literary Hub
• A former Obama speechwriter recalls our most literary president, and looks for a way forward amid the darkness. | Literary Hub
• Pop culture in a post-truth America: on prestige TV’s meta-narrative fetish. | Literary Hub
• Mary Duffy basks in the crisp, cold light of a Shirley Hazzard sentence; in a 2005 conversation with John Freeman, Hazzard recalls New York’s mid-century literary life. | Literary Hub
• “It occurred to me then that, although I did not live in the time of Arthur Rimbaud, I existed in the time of Bob Dylan.” Patti Smith on performing at this year’s Nobel Prize ceremony. | The New Yorker
• Vivian Gornick on “the shock of the quotidian” and Marriage as a Fine Art by Julia Kristeva and Philippe Sollers. | The New Republic
• Profiles of 10 poets who published debut collections in 2016, including Ocean Vuong, Tommy Pico, and Solmaz Sharif. | Poets & Writers
• “Sometimes to get a clearer sense of reality, you have to take some time to dream.” Wired will publish a science fiction issue including work by N. K. Jemisin, Etgar Keret, and others. | Wired
• From reading Jules Verne in secret to having potentially created China’s Star Wars: A profile of Liu Cixin. | The Guardian
• “It is easy enough to list the small group of well-known, foundational authors; but we must also take note of those lesser known writers—most enslaved at one point; a few born free—whose names and works deserve to be commemorated.” On early African American writing. | Times Literary Supplement
• Jeanette Winterson on the Christmas Story, “an imaginative bridge from a fixed situation into a situation where everything will change.” | Omnivoracious

Also on Lit Hub: The true tale of a heroic Italian optician who rescued refugees · It sounds great but booksellers can barely afford to shop local · From Ongoingness, by Sarah Manguso, out now in paperback.

---