TODAY: In 2006, New York Times bestselling novelist Octavia E. Butler dies.
- “Jackson is one of American fiction’s impossible presences, too material to be called a phantom in literature’s house, too in-print to be ‘rediscovered,’ yet hidden in plain sight.” Jonathan Lethem on the brilliance of Shirley Jackson. | Lit Hub
- The legendary Lawrence Ferlinghetti has died at 101. | The Hub
- The time has come to prove your literary prowess: how many of the 100 most famous passages in literature can you identify? | Lit Hub
- Georgina Lawton reflects on the series of DNA tests that confirmed what she already knew: “My Irish mum and English father could not have produced me, a brown-skinned, curly-haired baby.” | Lit Hub Memoir
- Daphne Brooks remembers Rosetta Reitz, who promoted “the import and legacies of blues women’s work as a kind of feminist public service.” | Lit Hub Music
- “The cunning beauty and delight of Arcadia is how its ingredients—human, romantic, intellectual, scientific—are meshed together to make a perfect whole.” Hermione Lee considers the algorithmic genius of Tom Stoppard’s play. | Lit Hub
- Read a roundtable discussion on the past, present, and future of queer voices in crime fiction. | CrimeReads
- “The world is full of painful stories. Sometimes it seems as though there aren’t any other kind”: on Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower. | Book Marks
- “The big thing is always thinking about who we are missing.” Introducing the new wave of powerful executives and editors of color in publishing. | Vulture
- Kareem James Abu-Zeid talks with poet Najwan Darwish about Palestinian identity, settler-colonialism, musical obsessions, insomnia, and the translator-poet relationship. | Words Without Borders
- Reading this year’s NBCC Award finalists: Colette Bancroft on Sarah Smarsh’s She Come by It Natural. | Lit Hub
- On the highs and lows of staging King Lear in a virtual twelfth-grade classroom. | The Point
- “Resistance must be remade and reimagined for each new political moment.” Eula Biss considers the multiplicity of resistance. | The Paris Review
- “In some ways, I suppose, I’m just not that dedicated to my vocation.” Kazuo Ishiguro on craft, his literary career, and the state of modern society. | New York Times Magazine
- English teacher Karla Hilliard talks to Nick Ripatrazone about teaching Appalachian lit to West Virginia high schoolers. | Lit Hub
- On the legacy of John Keats and his best poems. | The Guardian
- “When philosophical fiction is bad, it’s really bad.” Why are literature and philosophy such an awkward match? | The New Republic
Also on Lit Hub: Mary Gordon interviews Patricia Lockwood and tries to understand literary hagiography • How genetic sequencing exonerated an Olympian accused of doping • Read from Olga Tokarczuk’s newly translated book, The Lost Soul (trans. Antonia Lloyd-Jones, illus. Joanna Concejo)
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