TODAY: In 1998, Halldór Laxness, poet, writer, and only Icelandic Nobel Prize winner, dies.
- How young is too young for death? Kevin Wilson on reading (and not reading) Harry Potter to his son. | Literary Hub
- American MFAs by the numbers: on the eve of AWP, some artfully juxtaposed statistics. | Literary Hub
- 5 books you might’ve missed in January. | Literary Hub
- Please don’t buy books just to send to Donald Trump (there are more worthy places!). | Literary Hub
- The art of translation is undergoing a renaissance: 20 up-and-coming translators under 40. | Culture Trip
- An interactive map of 51 poets who immigrated to the United States, from the countries banned by Donald Trump and beyond. | My Poetic Side
- On Lydia Davis’ and Jhumpa Lahiri’s recent attempts to learn new languages in precisely opposite manners. | The Millions
- That opening, to me, is one hell of a sentence: John Rechy on William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily.” | The Atlantic
- Veering between fiction and fact: On the current state of the South African novel. | Public Books
- “Nothing just comes. It’s all rehearsed.” A short story by Gordon Lish. | Granta
- “I had this place, this dank corner in the back room of a shop, to discover what new permissions I would grant myself.” Frederick McKindra on his complicated relationship with gay pornography. | BuzzFeed Reader
Also on Lit Hub: On the dedications of James Baldwin · Your guide to politics and protest amid the panels at AWP
