Lit Hub Daily: January 24, 2022

TODAY: In 1891, Caresse Crosby, co-founder of the Black Sun Press and “literary godmother to the Lost Generation of expatriate writers in Paris,” is born.  

• “You’re old, you sag, you get over it.” Maggie Rowe collects words to live by from The Golden Girls. | Lit Hub Film & TV

• Luke Cassidy makes a case for turning down tepid book deals. | Lit Hub

• “Sometimes I think that not art but the idea of it might finally be played out.” Kate Colby muses on pareidolia. | Lit Hub Art

• Ricky Tucker on Paris Is Burning and the magic of queer blackness—which, “when fully unleashed, is some kind of mystical, magical commodity.” | Lit Hub

• WATCH: Margaret O’Mara on how historians understand the presidency of Donald Trump. | Lit Hub Virtual Book Channel

• “Today, the Newbery’s mission increasingly encompasses an awareness of past failures to think about all children as future leaders.” A look at the Newbery Award at 100. | Slate

• Kyle Chayka unpacks the ingenious simplicity of Wordle. | The New Yorker

• “The idea that there are near-Gods of creativity amongst us is a potent one, particularly in a world that feels increasingly unpredictable.” On the destructive myth of the lone creative genius. | Document Journal

• Rebecca Solnit makes the case for planting roses in difficult times. | The Nation 

• Char Adams looks at groups working to supply incarcerated people with books amid restrictions. | NBC News

• A new exhibit, organized by the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, celebrates Black comic book writers. | Reuters

Also on Lit Hub: Eileen Pollack on her father’s deathbed hallucinations • A poem by Aaiún Nin • Read from Sjón’s newly translated novel,  Red Milk (tr. Victoria Cribb)

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