TODAY: In 1937, John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men is published
- “Rejection is not always triumphant or empowering. Growing a tough skin isn’t always fun.” The accidental rejection expert revisits her viral essay. | Lit Hub
- “I use the Selectric to write sentences, never paragraphs.” Elizabeth McCracken on Eloise, Ethan Frome, and getting her characters out of the house. | Lit Hub
- “A great teacher is a gift. A great line editor is a miracle.” On the increasingly rare art of line editing. | Lit Hub
- “My therapist once described healing to me as a spiral, rather than a linear process.” Esmé Weijun Wang and R.O. Kwon in conversation. | Lit Hub
- How far can our outrage go? Wendy Willis on the merits (and pitfalls) of moral rage. | Lit Hub
- Podcast correspondent Emily Rose Stein looks at the year ahead in crime podcasts, and recommends some essential listening for 2019. | CrimeReads
- The Thin Black Line: 7 Books About America’s Borders, from The Crossing to The Line Becomes a River. | Book Marks
- This week in Secrets of the Book Critics: Laura Adamczyk on Jesus’ Son, Comemadre, and social media pedants. | Book Marks
- Sandra Cisneros, author of The House on Mango Street, has won the PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature. | Los Angeles Times
- Carol Emshwiller, a writer of speculative and experimental fiction, died on February 2 at age 97. | Locus Mag
- Peek inside Morgan Parker’s gorgeous L.A. apartment (but seriously, check out that sectional). | Apartment Therapy
- “Literary realism has this sort of indie-film attitude toward sex. It’s compulsive; nobody’s happy; they enjoy the cigarette way more than the sex.” Marlon James and Victor LaValle in conversation. | Vulture
- On boredom in contemporary literature, from Barthelme to Wallace to Knausgaard to Moshfegh. | iai
- “A particularly inarticulate form of political comment”: Karl Marx’s tomb in London was badly defaced in an act of vandalism. | The Guardian
- “I really wanted to use myself as a jumping-off point”: Esmé Weijun Wang on writing about her struggles with mental illness. | Pacific Standard
Also on Lit Hub: Duke Haney on Otherppl • Reading Women talks romance novels • Five books you may have missed in January • Women who revolutionized film and television • Read a story from Mia Couto’s collection Rain (trans. Eric M.B. Becker)
