Lit Hub Daily: April 7, 2023

TODAY: In 1887, Gabriela Mistral, the first Spanish American author to receive the Nobel Prize in literature, is born.  

• She “carried the whiff of doom from the play’s very first moment.” How Cate Blanchett captured Tennessee Williams’s greatest character, Blanche duBois, in a unique production of A Streetcar Named Desire. | Lit Hub Theater

• Why we should care about penguins. | Lit Hub Nature

• A brief history of the science of reading. | Lit Hub

• Rory Carroll recounts when the IRA attempted to blow up Margaret Thatcher and her cabinet: “The assassination could be cloaked in strategy, but the impetus was revenge.” | Lit Hub History

• A reading list of spiritual disillusionment. | Lit Hub Reading Lists

• Curtis Sittenfeld’s Romantic Comedy, Isabella Hammad’s Enter Ghost, Nicole Chung’s A Living Remedy, and Susanna Hoffs’ This Bird Has Flown all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. | Book Marks

• A few tactics for fighting book bans in your community. | The Washington Post

• Speaking of book bans, Florida Democrats are trying to use Ron DeSantis’s censorship law to ban his memoir. | The Guardian 

• “I want to live! I want to turn 100 and marvel at my children’s gorgeous heads of gray hair.” Cheryl Strayed takes the Oldster Questionnaire. | Oldster Magazine

• Italy has banned ChatGPT over privacy concerns. | The New York Times

• “True Grit is a wild ride for readers.” Revisiting Charles Portis’s big (and only) hit. | The New Republic

• Someone ought to buy the Virginia house where Willa Cather was born and restore it. C’mon, people, it’s available for $200,000! | The Winchester Star

Also on Lit Hub: Against suffering for your art • Craft advice from Dani Shapiro • Read from Helen Elaine Lee’s latest novel, Pomegranate

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