TODAY: In 1961, American dramatist Arthur Miller and film star Marilyn Monroe are granted a divorce in Mexico, on the grounds of “incompatibility”.
- Iconic science fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin has died at 88. Read Le Guin’s best life advice and John Freeman’s last interview with the great writer. | The New York Times, Literary Hub
- You, too, can live in a house of mirth! How to decorate your house (and arrange your books) like Edith Wharton. | Literary Hub
- Nobody’s shithole: Gabrielle Bellot looks at the history of vilifying Haiti and the Caribbean, from Pat Robertson to Donald Trump. | Literary Hub
- On Barbara Comyns, outsider artist, who produced Gothic masterworks without a formal education. | Literary Hub
- Dan O’Brien on the fleeting pleasures of the theater in the face of cancer. | Literary Hub
- “I just don’t believe in treating books like they’re fragile simply because authors’ egos are.” Speaking with author and critic Charlotte Shane. | Book Marks
- Roxane Gay, Cheryl Strayed, Hilton Als, and Ruth Reichl will be among those editing this year’s Best American anthologies. | EW
- There’s no place like home: on the writers leading the Kansas literary renaissance. | The Millions
- “Her writing is sad, but in a way that calls to mind queer writers, who have always had to engineer new forms to contain their grief and to attempt to convey what it means to live a life nested inside of another life.” Like Lit Hub, Brandon Taylor loves Joan Didion. | them.
- “The whole world is anemic and full of good mannered vampires who crave one another’s broken blood.” Harmony Holiday introduces her Spectacular Herbs series. | BOMB Magazine
- “Harry Potter tends to mean something different to me, as it might to others who’ve endured trauma.” On taking comfort in Harry Potter’s adolescent anger after a brush with death. | The Atlantic
- The most beautiful things can be the most dangerous: How libraries handle Shadows From the Walls of Death, an arsenic-saturated book from 1874. | Atlas Obscura
Also on Literary Hub: Three poems from the new anthology Through Clenched Teeth • On Banthology, tales from the travel-ban countries • A classic by Barbara Comyns: Read from The Juniper Tree.
