Lit Hub Daily: April 27, 2021
THE BEST OF THE LITERARY INTERNET
TODAY: In 1927, Coretta Scott King is born.
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What’s a philosopher, anyway? Simon Critchley looks beyond the Monty Pythonesque definition we’ve been working with. | Lit Hub PhilosophyArticle continues after advertisement
- Jaime Fuller tracks down two perfect quarantine reads—in which no groups congregate, no one hugs their parents, and there’s just the right amount of solitude. (Plus, foreplay with a bear.) | Lit Hub Criticism
- Get your New Book Tuesday on with these 12 new reads. | The Hub
- “Perhaps what any writer needs is the willingness to visit the basement, to make sure our work has a basement.” Maria Mutch on ditching the writing plan and embracing mystery. | Lit Hub Craft
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Winifred Bird ventures out on Mount Moreyoshi, guided by a bear hunter and a train conductor, in search of wild bamboo shoots. | Lit HubArticle continues after advertisement
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“Why have so many authors, past and present, refused to let their heroines age?” Mary Sharratt makes a case for moving beyond Act One. | Lit Hub
- Elissa Washuta talks to Eliza Smith about the desire to write a big book, how the essay has changed, and the high stakes of heartbreak. | Lit Hub
- Kristin Valdez Quade discusses literary community, writing about addiction, and adapting a short story into the first chapter of her novel. | Lit Hub
- Nick Kolakowski with the greatest getaway drivers in contemporary crime fiction. | CrimeReads
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Fingersmith, Moby-Dick, The Year of Magical Thinking, and more rapid-fire book recs from J. Courtney Sullivan. | Book MarksArticle continues after advertisement
- Put a mustache on it: Kristen Arnett considers jokes in fiction. | Poets & Writers
- “It’s a strange thing to have a business that part of you doesn’t really want people to come to—at least not before it’s safe.” On opening a small-town bookstore in the middle of a pandemic. | Texas Monthly
- Listen to an interview with Crystal Wilkinson, who was recently named Kentucky’s next poet laureate. | WKMS
- “When you do have a shot at moving up, I wanted to see, what will you do? What will you sacrifice?” These are some of the questions Megha Majumdar asked herself while writing A Burning. | Public Books
- “I think my book fits in the places where I’m always trying to write, the gray areas, areas that people don’t talk about.” Ashley C. Ford on writing about incarceration and unconditional love. | Publishers Weekly
- Porochista Khakpour explores the story of Iraqi poet Nazik al-Mala’ika, whose work “has largely evaded the West.” | Poetry Foundation
