Lit Hub Daily: January 11, 2022

• “I cannot imagine how I would have ever known to write my own poems had Claude McKay not written his.” Jericho Brown on Claude McKay’s subversive poems of love and protest. | Lit Hub Poetry

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• It’s a big week for new books: here are 21 titles coming your way. | The Hub

• “You cannot make them do what you want because look, it’s a sword. A sword means no.” Gwen E. Kirby on Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and her own literary “stabby period.” | Lit Hub

• Lessons from The Princess Bride: break the rules of storytelling… but maybe not all of them. | Lit Hub Craft

• Charlotte Higgins and Stacey Swann discuss why we return to the Greeks myths again and again (and again). | Lit Hub

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• Is there a serial killer lurking in the Himalayas’ Parvati Valley? Harley Rustad probes the mysteries of the lost. | Lit Hub

• This month’s 5 Authors, 7 Questions, No Wrong Answers features Evan Hughes, Andrew Lipstein, Nikki May, Sequoia Nagamatsu, and Weike Wang. | Lit Hub

• “It turned out that it’s possible.” Lejla Kalamujić on being openly gay in Sarajevo. | Lit Hub Radio

• “It never occurred to me to write something people want to read.” Read a profile of Hanya Yanagihara. | The New Yorker

• Dan Falk on the remarkable work of Curious George author H.A. Rey, whose astronomy books recreated star maps with “wit, grace, and accuracy.” | Nautilus

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• On the history of Mississippi’s Freedom Libraries and the fight for library equality. | JSTOR Daily

• What’s the perfect first Wordle guess? Linguists, engineers, and puzzle obsessives are on the case. | The Ringer

• Well, this isn’t great: Americans are reading fewer books than they used to, according to a new poll. | Gallup

• Thinking about starting a DIY project? These books could help get it off the ground. | Book Riot

• “Grief should remind us to pay attention to the everyday.” Kathryn Schulz discusses writing about loss—and reflecting on it during a pandemic. | Los Angeles Times

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Also on Lit Hub: How stolen cultural artifacts made their way to a major museum • A poem from Vijay Seshadri’s collection • Read from Antoine Wilson’s latest novel, Mouth to Mouth