TODAY: In 2011, President Barack Obama awards Maya Angelou the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
- “You don’t know anything,” and other writing advice from Toni Morrison. | Lit Hub
- From book festivals to breathtaking natural beauty to damn fine cups of coffee, five reasons a writer should move to Brisbane (immediately). | Lit Hub
- “We want people who love to read, walk through the door and feel, oh here’s my tribe. I’m at home here.” The Center for Fiction is opening in Brooklyn, so prepare to make yourself at home. | Lit Hub
- A radical bookstore in southern Appalachia: An interview with Asheville’s Firestorm Books & Café. | Lit Hub
- “One wintry Canadian night I’m stunned by an intense craving for my mother’s cake.” Ayelet Tsabari on the power of family recipes. | Lit Hub
- New titles from Toni Morrison, Valeria Luiselli, and Geoff Dyer all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. | Book Marks
- CrimeReads espionage enthusiast Molly Odintz takes us on a tour of the new KGB Spy Museum, from the schlocky, to the shocking, to the sobering. | CrimeReads
- Why is the phrase “a novel” still so ubiquitous on book covers? | Vox
- “Everything is subliminal.” On Fabio, “clinch covers,” and the steamy history of the art on romance novels. Which by the way, you should totally be reading. | Jezebel, Vulture
- Betty Ballantine, inventor of the modern paperback and co-founder of Bantam and Ballantine Books, has died at 99. | USA Today
- Read a new story by Olga Tokarczuk (translated by Jennifer Croft). | Granta
- “I mistook it for mine.” Jake Malooley—one of the journalists Jill Abramson plagiarized in her new book, Merchants of Truth—interviewed her about it. | Rolling Stone
- Becoming, An American Marriage and Barracoon are among this year’s literary nominees for the NAACP Image Awards. | The Root
- Arundhati Roy will headline the 2019 PEN World Voices Festival. | The New York Times
Also on Lit Hub: On the New Books Network, Alex Hertel-Fernandez talks to Heath Brown about the terrifying influence of conservative interest groups • Behind the scenes of Sam Pecknipah’s The Wild Bunch • What eight missing manuscript pages can tell us about a 20th century genocide • Read from Death is Hard Work
