TODAY: In 1932, writer Vasily Aksyonov is born; he was one of the last Soviet-era writers to endure a ban by Kremlin censors and be stripped of his citizenship.
- Because great writers can, in fact,have cats(and yes, Karl Ove, dogs too): from Chester Himes and Ursula K. Le Guin, to Judy Blume and Julio Cortazar, we have the proof. | Lit Hub
- The time I went fishing with the great Barry Hannah: William Giraldi recalls his conversations with a true “rebel of language.” | Lit Hub
- On the 60th anniversary of its American publication, 60 covers of Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, from the sublime to the ridiculous. | Lit Hub
- On the power of the surreal, rulebreaking memoir, from Leonora Carrington to Wendy C. Ortiz. | Lit Hub
- Sick, scandalous, or spectacular? Looking back at the first reviews of Lolita, published in America 60 years ago this week. | Book Marks
- How Cold War paranoia led the crime comics industry to (nearly) censor itself out of existence. | CrimeReads
- “Editing books isn’t something you can really teach: it’s sort of intuitive, entirely subjective, and like most things the more you do it the better you become at it.” A conversation between Fitzcarraldo Editions publisher Jacques Testard and New Directions president Barbara Epler. | Popula
- Before there were laptops, there was the writing box: a mobile writing device with a sloped surface and interior storage for paper, quills, and ink that allowed users to scribble on the go. | The Atlantic
- “If you want to see a community turn against an artwork that depicts them, make it the only one. If that artwork is by a woman, about women, and openly feminist, half the job’s already done.” Why it’s time to forgive The Joy Luck Club. | Slate
- On the rise of literary culture in Bhutan, a small Himalayan country home to the international Mountain Echoes festival of literature, art, and culture. | The New York Times
- “Dogs have never interested me.” With that admission, Karl Ove Knausgaard has published perhaps his most controversial work yet. | The New Yorker
- The fashion brand Loewe collaborated with photographer Steven Meisel to design new covers for a range of classics like Heart of Darkness and Wuthering Heights. | The Cut
- “It was the first time I saw how the literature of America could be Zen, and how Zen could be American. . . but where were all the women?” Blair Hurley on reading The Dharma Bums as a teenager. | The Paris Review
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