TODAY: In 1926, Richard Yates is born.
- “It’s the imposition of someone else’s idea of motherhood that chafes, and that I resist, and want to tear down.” Sarah Langan on the damaging archetype of The Mom. | Lit Hub
- “If the outside world was where my Jamaican accent was still enough to merit comment and require masquerade, these events were where I was encouraged to keep it alive.” Louis Chude-Sokei on his dining table that reflected the Black diaspora. | Lit Hub Memoir
- An Tran on the fake translation shaking up the Buddhist Anglosphere. | Lit Hub
- “What words can one summon that might circumvent that wall?” Philip Metres on the silence that separates Americans from Palestine and Israel. | Lit Hub Politics
- How Istanbul’s first independent literature house is resisting Erdogan and his AKP party (and looking beautiful while doing it). | Lit Hub
- The Last Samurai, 10:04, A Wrinkle in Time, and more rapid-fire book recs from Lauren Oyler. | Book Marks
- Tod Goldberg on growing up in close proximity to a bizarre series of accidents, tragedies, and murders. | CrimeReads
- Jeff Bezos is stepping down as the CEO of Amazon. | CNBC
- “I’m not interested in demolition for demolition’s sake. I want to build something.” Why Dan-el Padilla Peralta wants scholars to rethink the future of classics. | New York Times Magazine
- “When I write sex, I have to turn myself on, first and foremost. The first drafts are always for me.” Melissa Broder shares how she wrote Milk Fed. | BOMB
- Maria E. Andreu on learning that dystopic realities (read: COVID-19) aren’t as splashy as they are in fiction. | Lit Hub
- What’s old is new again: unpacking the sudden rise of medieval script on Instagram. | The Baffler
- On the accuracy of fictional depictions of influencers, as told by an influencer. | Vice
- Comedian Catherine Cohen tries her hand at quarantine-inspired poetry. | Vulture
- “It would take years for me to find the table to teach me a valuable moral lesson about my search for a table.” In which Lauren Oyler tries to buy a new table. | The Believer
- Dantiel W. Moniz shares some of the images that, while writing her book, “made me think deeper about how to layer in complexity to ideas that had already begun to seed.” | Pioneer Works
Also on Lit Hub: David Hardin on telling the story of Flint, Michigan • Lauren Oyler in conversation with Kyle Chayka • Read from Ben Okri’s new collection, Prayer for the Living
