Lit Hub Daily: April 28, 2020

• A night on the frontlines in the middle of a pandemic: EMT Maya Alexandri on dealing with the fallout of Covid-19. | Lit Hub: Life in a Pandemic
• “The pursuit of art, high art, separated him from many of the political journalists he ran with.” Matt Gallagher breaks down the mechanics of Robert Stone’s political writings. | Lit Hub
• Vijay Seshadri examines the historical forces that shaped T.S. Eliot, perennial enigma. | Lit Hub
• ON THE VBC: Nina Renata Aron talks desperate love and codependency, on Sheltering. | Lit Hub
• “Scribe.” A poem by Paul Auster from the collection White Spaces. | Lit Hub
• James Tate Hill recommends five debut novels to listen to while you stay at home. | Lit Hub
• “Good cooks never betray their secrets; they’d rather take them to the grave.” Lessons from Erasmo Hernandez Leon, Fidel Castro’s private chef. | Lit Hub Food
• Natalie Carnes on what Saint Augustine’s Confessions got wrong about women and motherhood. | Lit Hub History
• In honor of Harper Lee’s birthday, a look back at the first reviews of To Kill a Mockingbird. | Book Marks
• Imogen Kealey introduces us to Nancy Wake: socialite, spy, and the most decorated heroine of WWII. | CrimeReads
• New release highlights: Here are 20 books hitting the (virtual) shelves today. | The Hub
• Online retailer Bookshop reached a new milestone: $1 million in proceeds raised for independent bookstores across the country. | The Hub
• Legendary Irish poet Eavan Boland has died at the age of 75. Read her recent poem, “Eviction.” | | RTE, The New Yorker
• “I don’t know what will happen to my stuff when I die, but one thing I’m pretty sure of is that Pennywise will be around”: An annotated interview with Stephen King. | The New York Times
• “Boccaccio remains one of the most articulate and thoughtful eyewitnesses to a society living with a pandemic.” So, what would he have to say about COVID-19? | Boston Review
• “It feels senseless, suddenly, to keep doing what we’ve always done.” Lynn Steger Strong on the writer’s life in New York City, before and during the coronavirus pandemic. | The Guardian
• A new documentary peeks inside the world of rare books and the people who sell them. | The Economist
• The pandemic is changing the way people buy books—and it’s not all bad news. | Wired

Also on Lit Hub: Nick Kowalcyzk on discovering the truth of his parentage • Read from Tomasz Jedrowski ‘s debut novel Swimming in the Dark.