Lit Hub Daily: February 22, 2019

• “There’s a compartment for everything, even heroes.” Yewande Omotoso on what to do when you’re mistaken for another writer. | Lit Hub
• Ben Rybeck goes deep on Best Adapted Screenplay nominees If Beale Street Could Talk and The Ballad of Buster Scruggs ahead of the Oscars. | Lit Hub
• “If you squint enough at those virtual smiles, it’s a little concerning.” How worried about virtual reality should we be? | Lit Hub
• “The close proximity to Catherine began to clear away the comforting illusions Diderot had held about the Russian empress.” The unlikely friendship between the empress and the philosopher. | Lit Hub
• “It seems like every day I’m forced to decide whether to re-plot my story, so my fiction is still fiction…” Lee Goldberg on what to do when your crazy thriller plots come true. | CrimeReads
• A Trumpian dystopia, investigations into Chernobyl and the U.S. Empire, and Janet Malcolm’s essays all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. | Book Marks
• “There is a strong body of opinion that rejects the idea of another Jane Austen statue”: A proposal to include a statue of Jane Austen in Winchester Cathedral was scrapped after residents pushed back. | The Guardian
• “The Astronomer was on his bicycle.” Read an excerpt from Kathryn Davis’s The Silk Road. | Granta
• A Kickstarter campaign to raise $15,000 for boxed sets of postcards celebrating female authors reached its goal in under 24 hours. | Digital Journal
• “Haymarket aims to be a socialist workplace in a capitalist world.” Read a profile of progressive publishing house Haymarket Books. | Chicago Reader
• It’s official: having good grammar makes you more attractive. Or at least using the Oxford comma does. | GQ
• A 160-year-old letter by a friend of Charles Dickens’ ex-wife shows how the author attempted to commit her to an asylum – for another woman. | Daily Mail
• “The thing about a lot of West fantasies is that it’s still following European archetypes. Evil is clearly evil. Evil is Sauron. That reflects a Calvinist, Christian worldview.” Marlon James and Roxane Gay in conversation. | Los Angeles Times

Also on Lit Hub: Nicole Walker talks to Eric May about realistic sustainability on the New Books Network • How Louisa May Alcott landed on the front lines of the Civil War • Six audio books to get you through the Oscars • Read from Birthday