TODAY: In 1912, writer Tillie Olsen is born.
- “[A]dultery, spousal murder, infanticide, and testicles” and other things you might find in early children’s books. | Lit Hub
- “What’s needed is magic.” (Also: talent, focus, and endurance.) Writing advice from Haruki Murakami. | Lit Hub
- Crossing the border into a crueler America: Reyna Grande on two crossings, 30 years apart. | Lit Hub
- “No one ever suggested that once I’d arrived I could move on again.” Tim Johnston on the problems of changing style, novel to novel. | Lit Hub
- The virtue of giddiness in art: Rose Haward on desire and dizziness, from Bernini to Adjani. | Lit Hub
- “Reading it, we are up against the raw experience of nightmare”: the first American reviews of Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar. | Book Marks
- Taylor Stevens on finding thrillers after leaving a cult. | CrimeReads
- “We know—with joy and relief—that we’re in the hands of an artist with vision.” Claire Messud on Paweł Pawlikowski’s Cold War. | NYRB
- “It’s not enough just to read anymore. It’s not even enough to post your reading on Instagram anymore. Today, you have to create an atmosphere to show just how analog and sensual you’re being.” Candles: the Hot New Literary Accessory. No pun intended? | The New York Times
- “A novel requires stamina and grit. But I learned style from poetry and short stories.” Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ and Oyinkan Braithwaite in conversation. | LARB
- “Consumers hold a pernicious power, so this trend towards free content won’t reverse itself unless we want it to.” What’s behind the precipitous decline in writers’ incomes. | Electric Literature
- Chooseco, LLC, the children’s book publisher that owns the trademark to “Choose Your Own Adventure,” is suing Netflix for “infringement, dilution and unfair competition” with the film Black Mirror: Bandersnatch. | The Hollywood Reporter
- On legendary New York Times photographer Bill Cunningham’s posthumous memoir. | Hyperallergic
- “Those words were the nourishment I needed”: Read Bangladeshi photographer Shahidul Alam’s letter to Arundhati Roy, who wrote him while he was imprisoned. | The Guardian
Also on Lit Hub: Reyna Grande on two border crossings, 30 years apart • Finding love, one literary event at a time • Read from Something Like Breathing
