TODAY: In 1936, June Jordan is born.
- “The legend of the Devil’s contract is the most alluring…story ever told.” Ed Simon on what the age-old Faustian bargain reveals about the modern world. | Lit Hub Criticism
- (Speaking of deals with the Devil…) If you’re going to platform extremists, you should at least check their facts: Maris Kreizman on publishing’s nonfiction problem. | Lit Hub
- Taffy Brodesser-Akner on psychics and writer’s block: “I am embarrassed to say I gave her in excess of $100 to clear my third eye.” | Lit Hub Craft
- “Carolyn had always known she was a writer, but I didn’t figure out that I was a writer too until the year after she was killed.” Pamela Jean Tinnen on writing through grief. | Lit Hub Memoir
- Dan Sheehan talks to Kevin Barry about Westerns, doomed romances, and reinventing the novel. | Lit Hub In Conversation
- “I can look at every object listed above and tell a story about each.” Ben Shattuck sings the praises of a secluded writing space. | Lit Hub Craft
- Teddy Wayne asks Kevin Barry, Dinaw Mengestu, Yasmin Zaher and more authors 7 questions with no wrong answers. | Lit Hub In Conversation
- Faylita Hicks, Taffy Brodesser-Akner, Emily Van Duyne, and more! These 27 new books are out today. | Lit Hub Reading Lists
- “At every intersection, the patient regrets not carrying dice in his pocket to decide for him whether to keep going in the same direction or turn.” Read from Yoko Tawada’s novel, Paul Celan and the Trans-Tibetan Angel, translated by Susan Bernofsky. | Lit Hub Fiction
- Sasha Frere-Jones on over fifty years of The Poetry Project and its New Year’s Day Marathon. | The Nation
- “But Jane made a calculated gamble a decade and a half ago, believing that sharing her experience in the labor movement…would be worth something to thousands of people who had no idea what the world of an organizer was like. She was right.” Sarah Jaffe remembers author and organizer Jane McAlevey. | The Baffler
- How do celebrity book clubs actually work? “While I fully believe that celebrities aren’t playing some nefarious game of imprint chess to benefit themselves, the pieces are still visible on the board.” | Esquire
- On people and their books: a photo essay of beach reads at New York’s Jacob Riis Park. | The Cut
- “Fulvio Risuleo’s and Antonio Pronostico’s appearance on the Italian graphic novel scene was quite sudden and unexpected.” Matteo Gaspari examines the rise of two graphic novelists. | The Comics Journal
- Matthew Wills considers the history of footnotes. | JSTOR Daily
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