TODAY: In 1775, Agnes Bulmer, who is believed to have written the longest epic poem ever written by a woman — “Messiah’s Kingdom” — which took over nine years to complete, is born.
- “Learning that resistance was possible was an invaluable dimension of my education.” Angela Davis on international solidarity and the future of Black radicalism. | Lit Hub Politics
- The humble confidence of Seamus Heaney: R.F. Foster looks at the poet’s roots, influences, and individuality. | Lit Hub Poetry
- Geraldine Woods considers the power of repetition as a literary tool, from a classic mid-century American novel to polemicists, to poets, to poets, to poets… | Lit Hub Craft
- In celebration of Virgo season, this month’s Astrology Book Club is entirely accurate. | Lit Hub
- “Like so many artists of his time and place, Krzhizhanovsky survived by accident. He remains a riddle.” On the experimental realism of an eccentric Russian Anglophile. | Lit Hub
- Penelope Hobhouse digs into (sorry) the ancient Greek roots (sorry again) of contemporary gardens. | Lit Hub Nature
- As The Met reopens, a former employee longs for its lost art: “Of all the things my city throws at me, it’s the art that gets my heart racing.” | Lit Hub Art
- A brief history of the presidential election-to-be: Marvin Kitman imagines four—or eight, or ten—more years of Trump. | Lit Hub Politics
- Gitta Sereny’s Into That Darkness, Pamela Des Barres’ I’m With the Band, John Cheever’s journals, and more rapid-fire book recs from Emma Cline. | Book Marks
- “What if the class system, in all its byzantine subtlety, remains—and we are just turning our eyes away?” On reading Middlemarch during the pandemic, and why the US badly needs its own, modern George Eliot. | Financial Times
- How did Arkady Strugatsky, a former officer in the Soviet Army, become a key figure in the evolution of Russian science fiction? | Pledge Times
- Professionally and personally, Emma Cline has often wondered: What does one do about the often bizarre behavior of men? | The Guardian
- J.K. Rowling returned her 2019 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights award after Kerry Kennedy, the organization’s president, called Rowling’s transphobic tweets “deeply troubling.” | Deadline
- “The memoir attests to how skilled Talley and countless queer people of color are at laboring under violent conditions to produce stunning visuals.” What André Leon Talley’s memoir reveals about the fashion industry as a whole. | Boston Review
- Here’s how to donate books while staying safe during the pandemic. | Book Riot
- “There is a deep congruity between the movements of Faulkner’s mind, with its sense of an inescapable family trauma, and the history and culture of his region.” On Faulkner and the Jim Crow South. | New York Review of Books
Also on Lit Hub: Read a story from Susan Minot’s collection Why I Don’t Write · “American Abecedarian,” read a poem by Joshua Bennett ·
