TODAY: In 2004, poet and Nobel Prize laureate Czeslaw Milosz dies.
- “I can’t forgive his sins. But some of his stories remained in me, as they did in many others.”Gabrielle Bellot on the enigma of V.S. Naipaul. | Lit Hub
- What happens when you’re dubbed the “funniest woman in America” and you’re pretty sure you aren’t? | Lit Hub
- This is what a literary adaptation should look like: it certainly helps that We the Animalsdirector tk is a superfan of the source novel by Justin Torres. | Lit Hub
- Stepping into the boxing ring as a transgender man: Thomas Page McBee prepares for one more fight. | Lit Hub
- A brief history of women mountaineers: Susan Froderberg on breaking the last ceiling. | Lit Hub
- From William Maxwell to Muriel Spark, Kate Walbert recommends 5 novels to read—or reread—over a weekend. | Book Marks
- Con artists, impostors, serial killers, and gangsters galore: a roundup of August’s best true crime releases. | CrimeReads
- “Wolfe was not a fashion journalist, but everything he wrote was, in a way, about men’s fashion.” On “the carnival of menswear” in The Bonfire of the Vanities. | Garage
- The reading recommendation listicle Emily Dickinson might have written, had Emily Dickinson written listicles. | Lapham’s Quarterly
- “I am most free when I am writing poems.” Ada Limón on chaos, grief, and the power of naming. | BOMB
- “Study the kind of writing you want to emulate. Read your work aloud. Take classes with tough critics who’ll tell you the truth so your pages improve.” An interview with writing professor and Byline Bible author Susan Shapiro. | The Rumpus
- Is our obsession with hurrying up making us forget that reading was supposed to be fun in the first place? | Electric Literature
- “Required reading. A dangerous label, that.” V.E. Schwab on fantasy literature, generic snobbery, and gateway books. | Tor
- For myself, every page was a miracle: Patti Smith on reading Jean Genet’s The Thief’s Journal with Robert Mapplethorpe. | The Paris Review
