TODAY: In 1870, writer and historian Hilaire Belloc is born.
- When it comes to writing, there is such a thing as talent: Elizabeth Hardwick telling it like it is. | Lit Hub
- “Black Canadians do not actually come from outer space.” David Chariandy on Drake, Austin Clarke and an unsung outpost of the Caribbean diaspora. | Lit Hub
- Which came first, the color or the fruit? On the unlikely etymology of the word “orange.” | Lit Hub
- When a decades-long marriage reaches a breaking point: Ann Pearlman on how quickly a life can crash. | Lit Hub
- From Wallace Stevens to Seamus Heaney, on the correspondence of Sister Mary Bernetta Quinn. | Lit Hub
- From Emma Healey’s Whistle in the Dark to John Lingan’s Homeplace, the best reviewed books of the week. | Book Marks
- On growing up with Mary Higgins Clark and using crime fiction as a guide for dealing with terrible men. | CrimeReads
- “I breathe. I remain. I remember that Mississippi is not only its ugliness.” Jesmyn Ward on moving back home. | TIME
- Can an “architectural ugly duckling” be a historical landmark? That’s the question at the center of the fight to save Walt Whitman’s sole surviving New York City home. | Gothamist
- The long-rumored existence of missing chapters from The Autobiography of Malcolm X was confirmed this week when they were included as part of an auction in New York this week. | The New York Times
- “Sometimes our desires are absurd, the most intense ones inspired by the systems we actively try to resist and overthrow.” Lauren Oyler on two memoirs by Deborah Levy. | The New Republic
- 70 years after it stunned and confused its first New Yorker readers, Shirley Jackson’s classic short story “The Lottery” will be adapted into a feature film. | Deadline
- “You’ve got to move to Brooklyn, all of our friends are moving to Brooklyn.” Jonathan Lethem, Alexander Chee, Elissa Schappell and other writers on their city as literary capital. | Electric Literature
- “It was my impression that she was a strong person, but at regular intervals she’d worry about whether I’d write about her.” Flash fiction by Dorthe Nors. | The New Yorker
