Lit Hub Daily: February 3, 2020

• “Does one person have the rights to a story that happens to kids from all walks of life, everywhere?” On My Dark Vanessa and the way stories of trauma get told. | Lit Hub
• Don’t be like this: here are the top ten MFA archetypes to avoid (becoming). | Lit Hub
• “None of Dostoyevsky’s novels contains a single gangster. Dostoyevsky never knew them.” What the great Russian writers didn’t understand about the criminal mind. | Lit Hub
• The strange tale of the Oxford professor and his student, the Oxford conman. | Lit Hub
• In February’s Astrology Book Club, all signs point to staying in and reading. | Lit Hub
• “It wasn’t my job to save anyone.” How to write autofiction about your family without losing your mind. | Lit Hub
• Scarlett Thomas discusses the tricky work of writing the unsayable. | Lit Hub
• A sexy orc saga, a futuristic western, a new collection from Ken Liu, and more of February’s best Sci-Fi and Fantasy. | Book Marks
• “Some people resent like hell my expertise in my field of study. Sometimes they even resent the expertise I have representing myself, telling my own personal history.” Read an interview with Tressie McMillan Cottom. | The Sun
• “Queen of Suspense” Mary Higgins Clark died Friday at 92. | The New York Times
• After booksellers and author Jeanine Cummins received a series of “specific threats,” Flatiron Books, the publisher of Cummins’ novel American Dirt, canceled the book tour. | CNN
• The three-man jury for the National Book Council awards in Malta made the unusual decision to withhold a top novel prize this year, calling the three shortlisted books “below par.” | Malta Today
• “If you are a writer in a Rooney novel, you are sure to be discovered without going to any great lengths to promote yourself.” On Sally Rooney and the valorization of normalcy. | The Point
• “After colors, after the shapes, and after the shadows, all that was left was contrast.” Marcelo Hernandez Castillo on temporary blindness at the US-Mexico border. | The Paris Review
• As a teenager, Charlotte Brontë wrote a book “the size of a matchbox” that will soon go on public display. | The Guardian

Also on Lit Hub: On the Emergence Magazine podcast, Emma Marris on the human relationship to soil • Luke Geddes discusses the glamorous world of antique mall proprietorship on First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing • The delicate art of living alone • Melissa Mesku remembers Jade Sharma’s irreverence and audacity • Read from Gish Jen’s new novel The Resisters.