TODAY: In 1937, Bessie Head, often considered Botswana‘s most influential writer, is born.
- Can you guess which stories are the most anthologized of all time? |Literary Hub
- How literature saved me (and my father) from a cult. |Literary Hub
- Have journalists forgotten how to think like readers? | Literary Hub
- Empathy doesn’t seem to be working: on the need for radical otherness. |Literary Hub
- A veritable squirrel of wit, collecting bits of verbal trash: Read a 1976 review of Donald Barthelme’s Amateurs. | Book Marks
- “In 2008, his Knopf deadline looming, he disappeared.” Taffy Brodesser-Akner profiles Matthew Klam upon the publication of his first book in 17 years. | Vulture
- A provision of Edward Albee’s will apparently called for the destruction of all his incomplete manuscripts (though the estate has declined to confirm or deny following these orders). | NPR
- “An elevator appears where there never was an elevator before. The doors never open.” Flash fiction by Jonathan Lethem. | The New Yorker
- “How do I let images of violence change my life? How do I make myself responsible for and accountable to people in pain?” An interview with Draw Your Weapons author Sarah Sentilles. | Signature
- A medieval manuscript expert has claimed to have identified the author of the mysterious Voynich manuscript: a Jewish physician from Northern Italy. | The Guardian
- Radical poet Heathcote Williams, a “relentless scourge of the British establishment for half a century,” has died at 75. | The New York Times
- “I’m a citizen who is not a patriot. I’m a citizen in the sense of being invested in what we owe each other.” An interview with Teju Cole. | The Millions
Also on Lit Hub: Donal Ryan on a family tradition of anxiety · How one reader’s critique saved my novel its sexism · Take a first look at Empire of Glass, by Kaitlin Solimine
