TODAY: In 1667, at the première of Edward Howard’s play “The Change of Crowns,” actor John Lacy improvises a some lines about influence-peddling at court, which angers King Charles II. (The theater is closed, and Lacy is jailed).
- In honor of the 67th birthday of Ralph Ellison’s masterpiece, Invisible Man, here are 25 of the novel’s best covers. | Lit Hub
- “Who if not us?” 17 writers on the role of fiction in addressing climate change. | Lit Hub
- The timeless appeal of an American (library) in Paris: on the literary romance of the city of lights. | Lit Hub
- Why are so many fictional teens entering cults? Katherine Cusumano on the appeal of “the crisp contours of faith” in times of unrest. | Lit Hub
- “The gut does right to twist in these mountains.” Bryce Andrews visit’s Montana’s Mission Mountains, where grizzly bears and hobby farmers come face to face. | Lit Hub
- Garth Risk Hallberg makes a strong case for reading Lucky Per, the great Scandinavian novel. | Lit Hub
- Meet the biker gangs, bone detectives, and back alleys of Quebecois noir, as Paul French takes us on a guided tour of Montreal crime fiction. | CrimeReads
- As we await the Pulitzer Prize announcements later this afternoon, a look back at every Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction winner of the 21st Century. | Book Marks
- This week in Shhh….Secrets of the Librarians: Lydia Sigwarth on girl sleuths, evil librarians, and finding home in a children’s library. | Book Marks
- Tayari Jones has won the second annual Aspen Literary Prize, with a purse of $35,000, for An American Marriage. | The Aspen Times
- “Being a successful, middle-aged, overweight woman, people are so angry that you’re stepping out of line”: Alexandra Alter profiles E.L. James, the publicity-shy empress of kink, who is set to come out with a new novel—but no more sex dungeons! | The New York Times
- “It is about the anguish of not being white or of not being black enough, about being Italian and not being accepted as Italian”: Jhumpa Lahiri on the cosmopolitan fiction of Igiaba Scego. | New York Review Daily
- “To the idea of the ten-dollar word, the thesaurus says: really, there is no such thing as a budget for words.” In defense of the much-maligned thesaurus. | The Outline
- “We commiserated over… the strangeness of a person being judged by the size and shape of the flesh container they happened to inhabit.” Myla Goldberg on being photographed by Richard Avedon. | The New Yorker
- Inside the best house on literary Instagram: Susan Orlean’s modernist L.A. landmark, complete with springer spaniel. | L.A. Times
- “Deviant in syntax and form but also in semantics.” On translating Emily Dickinson. | The Paris Review
Also on Lit Hub: On But That’s Another Story, Veronica Chambers talks to Will Schwalbe about her storytelling education • Prepping for MFA programs as a person of color • Five books you make have missed in March • Read from Jennifer Acker’s debut novel, The Limits of the World
