Lit Hub Daily: August 17, 2023

• “A certain step toward falling in love.” Cornelia Powers considers the pleasure and communion of Austen’s country dance. | Lit Hub

• Rebecca Bengal traces a life in photography: “What else spoke to teenage me more than the surreal creepiness of a human ear found in a field?” | Lit Hub

• Victoria Wiet sings the praises of Party Girl, the 1995 cult film that launches a defense of librarianship. | Lit Hub Film & TV

• Peace Adzo Medie reflects on writing about violence against women in West Africa, both academically and through fiction. | Lit Hub

• John Jeremiah Sullivan on plumbing. Enough said. | Harper’s

• Meet Leighton Davies-Smith, the inventor obsessed with perfecting the writing pen. | The Wall Street Journal

• “Shakespeare writes with unimpeded curiosity and imagination about people who are ‘othered’ in society.” Farah Karim-Cooper makes the case for the contemporary relevance of the Bard. | TIME

• “To stressed-out, busy people inundated with thumbnail-size names and avatars, we’re just a blur of Naomis with highlights going on about Bill Gates.” Read an excerpt from Naomi Klein’s new book, Doppelganger. | Vanity Fair

• Isle McElroy recommends books that explore how marriage really works. | The Atlantic

Also on Lit Hub: Pidgeon Pagonis on the urgency of writing memoir as an intersex author • Jenna Clake on learning the craft of fiction by working in a call center • Read from Maya Binyam’s debut novel, Hangman