Lit Hub Daily: December 14, 2022

TODAY: In 1916, Shirley Jackson is born.   

• In memoriam: An incomplete list of the writers, editors, and great literary minds we lost this year. | Lit Hub

• Here are the best reviewed short story collections of 2022 (according to Book Marks). | Lit Hub

• Matt Mitchell muses on Jean Shepherd, suburban Ohio, and the Christmas Story universe (yes, there’s a whole universe). | Lit Hub Film & TV

• “One of the reasons it is easy to imagine Victorians on the Moon is that they imagined it themselves.” Iwan Rhys Morus on 19th-century fantasies of the future. | Lit Hub History

• An oral history of Roberta Flack’s “Killing Me Softly,” from composer to lyricist to stage. | Lit Hub Music

• Nick Swartsell considers the lingering weight of race and policing in Cincinnati’s Mount Auburn neighborhood. | Lit Hub Politics

• Your guide to not getting murdered in an English country manor house, from Maureen Johnson. | CrimeReads

• Rapid-fire book recs from Aubrey Plaza. | ELLE

• “Stories happen to be the most human thing we have to offer, right? Which means that the work that we’re doing in storytelling is actually human work.” Jason Reynolds reflects on being the national ambassador for young people’s literature. | NPR

• Katy Waldman deems 2022 the year of the sequel: “Authors crane their necks backward, in search of lost time, or money.” | The New Yorker

• David Ulin writes a eulogy for Bookforum, a magazine that “sought to make connections beyond the page.” | Los Angeles Times

• “Translation is the site of democratic aspirations.” Jenny Bhatt and Dr. Rita Kothari discuss Gujarati literature in translation. | Words Without Borders

• “At the time I didn’t understand that Jorge and I lived in different worlds; I suppose I was too busy trying to send him the right signals so he’d kiss me.” Fernanda Melchor on falling in love (translated by Sophie Hughes). | Granta

• Alina Stefanescu considers “the erotics of intellectual inquiry.” | Poetry

Also on Lit Hub: The magic of writing at sunrise • Finding glimmers of queerness under the sea: A reading list from Sabrina Imbler • Read Géza Csáth’s newly translated collection, “The Surgeon” from Opium and Other Stories

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