Lit Hub Daily: January 10, 2023

• “Just fade to white, dear.” Aminatta Forna remembers Fay Weldon. | Lit Hub

  Article continues after advertisement

• Ross Benjamin on Kafka’s diaries: “Often it cannot be determined in a given passage whether Kafka is registering a private experience, crafting fiction, or transforming the one into the other.” | Lit Hub Criticism

• “Writing a novel offers an extended experience of not getting to the point. So does reading one.” Suzanne Berne on why we write (and read) novels. | Lit Hub

• This month’s LIT HUB ASKS: 5 WRITERS, 7 QUESTIONS, NO WRONG ANSWERS features Kashana Cauley, Kevin Maloney, Nyani Nkrumah, Jason Roeder, and Daniel Torday. | Lit Hub Questionnaire

• Jordan Harper on the new wave of Los Angeles crime stories. | CrimeReads

  Article continues after advertisement

• Former US Poet Laureate Charles Simic has died at 84. | The New York Times

• “The game is rigged—the prize game, anyway.” Dan Sinykin breaks down the elitism at the heart of literary awards. | LARB

• ICYMI: Everything you need to know about the manuscript thief. | The Guardian

• How four librarians make their libraries safe community spaces. | Publishers Weekly

• “Kafka was, like anyone else, a mass of contradictions, and both his letters and his diaries refute the caricature of the writer as a fleshless recluse.” Becca Rothfield on Kafka’s diaries. | The New Yorker

  Article continues after advertisement

• Laura Miller has notes on Ross Douthat’s fantasy novel-in-progress. | Slate

• Take a deep dive into the linguistic origins of “y’all.” | Atlas Obscura

Also on Lit Hub: 20 new books debuting this week • On bad celebrity apologies • Read from Jessica Johns’s debut novel, Bad Cree