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“I risked what I thought was my most precious solitude and gained everything.” Sanjena Sathian on balancing solitude and community at an MFA. | Lit Hub
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A brief history of literary marginalia, which “has for centuries helped books to take on these different roles.” | Lit Hub History
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Helen Oyeymi talks to Kristin Iversen. | Lit Hub
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“The more we can describe and advocate for our work, the better chance we have of it being valued.” Alena Jones on contemporary bookselling, and Chicago’s Seminary Co-op move from a bookstore to a nonprofit. | Lit Hub
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How Bruce Springsteen’s melodramatic song “Jungleland” helped Natalie Standiford break from the tradition of minimalist-cool and embrace emotion in her novel. | Lit Hub Music
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“Franny and Zooey are spiritual freaks in this materialist world, and they can never quite fully separate the two.” Avram Alpert on the role of Zen Buddhism in Salinger’s novel. | Lit Hub Criticism
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“We have more tools available to uncover bad actors than ever before, yet we persist in playing along with them.” Gabrielle Bluestone on the Fyre Festival and the evil genius of hype. | Lit Hub
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White Oleander, Beloved, A Home at the End of the World, and more rapid-fire book recs from Chelsea Bieker. | Book Marks
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“Thanking an audience member for attending a Zoom is not the same as thanking them in the same physical place.” On what we lost when we lost in-person readings. | McSweeney’s
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What’s the difference between a “real” poem and a “hoax” poem (and more questions from the dawn of modernism). | JSTOR
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“‘Cancel’ and ‘woke’ are the latest terms to originate in Black culture only to be appropriated into the White mainstream and subsequently thrashed to death.” On the origin and cultural journey of “cancel.” | The Washington Post
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Paul Theroux contemplates turning 80, and closing in on “the Leina a ka ’Uhane, or the ‘leaping place of souls.’” | The New Yorker
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“Our beliefs form grooves in our lives that are hard to deviate from after a while.” Sarah Gerard on the writing process behind her essay collection Sunshine State. | The Creative Independent
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“He loved language viscerally, the way you would expect somebody who devotes a life to literature would, and so few in that world do.” Remembering Giancarlo DiTrapano. | The Believer
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Harron Walker on the many phases of her relationship with Torrey Peters: “elder and newbie, mentor and protégé, and for a time, most intimately, mother and daughter.” | W Magazine
Also on Lit Hub: How The Matrix paved the way for the Marvel universe • Ivana Bodrožic poem, “Breath of Brief Syllables” • Read from Willy Vlautin’s latest novel, The Night Always Comes
