Best of the Week: September 19 – 23, 2016

TODAY: In 1896, F. Scott Fitzgerald is born. 

• “I had this epiphany when I was five, sitting on the carpet in kindergarten listening to Mrs. Balfour trying to teach us how to read the clock. It dawned on me that time was passing and we were all going to be dead—what’s the point?” An interview with Ottessa Moshfegh. | The Guardian
• Publishing is always moving on: Merritt Tierce on the reality of making money as a writer. | Marie Claire
• “To achieve genuine diversity, the powerful need to share power (and profits) with people who are not like them.” Viet Thanh Nguyen on publishing’s diversity problem. | Library Journal
• He would always look at the city with a stranger’s eyes: On Albert Camus’ Paris. | The Paris Review
• Celebrate National Translation Month with new translations from the Hausa language, a short story by Daniel Saldaña París (translated by Christina MacSweeney), and much more. | National Translation Month
• Margaret Lazarus Dean on what draws her to the language of spaceflight, the pressure to fully observe, and the difference between writing fiction and nonfiction. | The Ribbon
• “If you can negotiate story time with three- and four-year-olds… that’s a skill you can take all the way up.” A profile of Carla Hayden, the recently appointed Librarian of Congress. | The New Yorker
• “I pledge to never be passive, patriotic, or grateful in the face of American abuse.” Kiese Laymon on his own fraught relationship with the American flag. | The Fader
• I curled up, became a full moon, and rolled on the floor: An excerpt from Yoko Tawada’s forthcoming novel, Memoirs of a Polar Bear (translated by Susan Bernofsky). | Granta
• “In a lot of ways, I was writing in the direction of my fears.” A profile of Brit Bennett. | Vogue
• Imagining the friendship of Anaïs Nin and Flannery O’Connor, both “sensualists” and “bad bitches.” | The Hairpin
• Adam Fitzgerald on 1990s TV, the grief/desire cycle, and the sinister banality of the suburbs. | Bookforum
• Maggie Nelson, Claudia Rankine, Sarah Stillman, and Gene Luen Yang are among this year’s recipients of the MacArthur Foundation’s ‘Genius’ Grants. | MacArthur Foundation
• My very first workshop experience was as an infiltrator: Lidia Yuknavitch on her experiences in writing classes. | Tin House
• How bad decisions make good fiction in the work of Jade Sharma, Elnathan John, and others. | Google Play

And on Literary Hub:

• What do we mean when we say women’s fiction? Liz Kay on broadening the scope of stories by and for women.
• Our doppelgängers, ourselves: why the uncanny valley continues to fascinate us.
• The reading series that wants writers to feel like rock stars.
• Fear and loathing in New England: Lev Grossman looks back at his first novel.
• Jeanette Winterson on Paris’s great bookstore, Shakespeare and Company.
• Is “show don’t tell” a universal truth or a colonial relic? On the western preference for visual over oral storytelling.
• Introducing a monthly advice column, Ask the Publicists. This month’s query: but what about my book?
• Writing advice from Edward Albee: when one of the great playwrights of the 20th century visits your high school.
• Joyce Carol Oates on great editors, bad reviews, and… the internet.
• What about a woman’s right to idleness? On the work of writing and Leopoldine Core’s When Watched.
• Etgar Keret on reading to his kids (and getting slapped at a reading). Part two of his conversation with Paul Holengraber.
• What Jane Austen can teach us about building suspense.
• Why do we love watching women self-destruct? An interview with Trainwreck author Sady Doyle.
• Birding while black: J. Drew Lanham on race, belonging, and a love of nature.
• Colette Shade on The House of Mirth, Thomas Piketty, and the literature of income inequality.
• The history (and present) of banning books in America: the ongoing fight against the censorship of ideas.
• How one woman photographed every library in New York.
• The poet and the sculptor: when young Rilke moved to the big city and met Rodin.
• But are you sure you want a baby? A side-by-side reading of Ian McEwan and Belle Boggs.
• TV in the age of Trump: an interview with Emily Nussbaum.
• Bouchercon 2016, New Orleans: favorite moments from this year’s crime fiction bash.

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