Lit Hub Daily: December 22, 2021

TODAY: In 1894, Claude Debussy’s symphonic poem Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, based on Mallarme’s 1876 poem of the same name, is first performed in Paris.   

• The clicks have spoken: From the Brontës’ graveyard water to the most famous short story ever written, it’s your favorite stories of the year.

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• “I am a Black man who represents other Black men wrongly convicted of murders and sexual assaults, and I wrestled with how best to assess Sebold’s culpability.” Innocence Project Lawyer Steven Wright on the innocence of Anthony Broadwater (and guilt of Alice Sebold). | Lit Hub

• Louise Erdrich’s The Night Watchman, Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet, Damon Galgut’s The Promise, and the rest of the Award-Winning Novels of 2021. | Book Marks

• “What I gained at first from these interviews was no particular insight or eloquent summation; it was rather the awareness that so many of these people were united in the knowledge that Frank Sinatra had a cold.” Gay Talese on writing his legendary Esquire profile. | Lit Hub

• Graphic novelist Rutu Modan talks to Jason Lutes about archeology, Israel, and his latest book, Tunnels. | Lit Hub Comics

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• Conor Sullivan recommends his favorite fishing books, from Hemingway to Lords of the Fly. | Lit Hub Reading Lists

• Olivia Rutigliano celebrates the best crime cinema of 2021. | CrimeReads

• Molly Odintz, Steph Cha, Sarah Weinman, and others break down the year in crime writing. | Los Angeles Times

• “We have little choice but to live in the world as it is, but that does not mean we should not try to hold on to what is most important from the world as it was.” Robert Zaretsky on books in a new age of orality. | The Baffler

• Is the “fertility plot” the new marriage plot? | Slate

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• “The first draft is always just word vomit.” Rax King on her creative process, her literary interests, and online communities. | The Creative Independent 

• On the treatment of victims and violence in Dune and the classic anime film Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. | Los Angeles Review of Books

• Matthew Specktor honors the life and legacy of Eve Babitz. | Los Angeles Times

• Cara Blue Adams discusses writing family relationships, addressing class dynamics, and creating a linked story collection. | Bookforum

Also on Lit Hub: Seressia Glass on her favorite fictional nerds • A poem by David Lehman • Read a story from Cara Blue Adams’s debut collection, You Never Get It Back

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