TODAY: In 1883, American storyteller and poet Daisy Turner is born in Grafton, Vermont to freed slaves. Later in life, she becomes well-known for her oral recordings of her family’s history.
- “You write what you want, the way it has to be.” Real talk from one of our greatest living writers, Anne Carson. | Lit Hub
- I hate your asterisks, and your dinkus, too: Brandon Taylor is fed up. | Lit Hub
- The memoir my uncle didn’t finish: Jeff Wheelwright goes through Peter Matthiessen’s notes on an adventurous life. | Lit Hub
- For novelist Richard Flanagan, the last subversive, truly private act might be reading a book. | Lit Hub
- Learning to tango helped Meghan Flaherty relearn what it means to touch another human body. | Lit Hub
- Edmund White praises Édouard Louis, Colm Tóibín confirms Tommy Orange’s debut is as good as you’ve heard, and 3 other books reviews you should read this week. | Book Marks
- “There’s something wrong, on a visceral level, about the very idea of children murderers.” Nina Laurin on the most unsettling mystery of all. | CrimeReads
- “Alvarez rendered my reality a little more tangible by putting it in words, but more than validation, the book proved to be premonition.” Concepción de León recommends getting into Julia Alvarez. | The New York Times
- “I’m trying to find the right balance, the right distance, that won’t distort, exaggerate, or minimize the world I’m attempting to capture.” Crystal Hana Kim interviews Lillian Li about her debut novel, Number One Chinese Restaurant. | AAWW
- “We had no strength left for feelings.” An excerpt from Varlam Shalamov’s Kolyma Stories, based on the 15 years Shalamov spent imprisoned in Soviet gulags. | New York Review of Books
- Read the first chapter of Donald Windham’s Two People, “a pivotal link in the lineage of queer novels.” | Electric Literature
- Rafia Zakaria traces “the history of an often vexed but always intriguing literary lineage from the nineteenth century until today,” Pakistani literature in English. | TLS
- It felt a bit like something historic was taking place: Molly Crabapple reports from (and illustrates) a recent town hall meeting for sex workers. | The Paris Review
