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TODAY: In 1905, Jean-Paul Sartre is born.
- “Rereading Louie’s stories affirms my sense that art matters and that writing matters.” Viet Thanh Nguyen on discovering Asian American literary voices as a 20-year-old. | Lit Hub
- Happy birthday to a legend of literature! On the grand cultural influence of Octavia Butler. | Lit Hub
- We’re still doomed: Roy Scranton on climate change. | Lit Hub
- “It doesn’t bother me, my messy relationship with Wayne, filled with love and loathing, disgust and respect, awe and awkwardness…” On the dark legacy of John Wayne. | Lit Hub
- “[There are] questions about contemporary Irishness which cannot be answered, only further complicated.” Lucy Caldwell on the tricky business of creating a national anthology. | Lit Hub
- Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s debut novel, Mark Haddon’s reimagining of Pericles, and a biography of Kim Jong Un all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. | Book Marks
- Ellen LaCorte looks at 8 thrillers that probe the dark truth lurking beneath a well-kept exterior, from “Everything I Never Told You” to “Rosemary’s Baby.” | CrimeReads
- “The impulse makes Hale relatable; the follow-through makes her impossible to root for.” On Kathleen Hale, Goodreads, and the nature of online criticism. | BuzzFeed News
- “There is no assumption of a need to pique a reader’s interest in your black characters’ lives. They are worthy of interest because they are worthy of interest.” Angela Davis, Fran Leibowitz, and more on Toni Morrison. | WSJ Magazine
- A fan letter to sportswriter Jon Bois, whose “work brings together sports and art, sports and media culture, sports and history, sports and creative nonfiction, sports and fiction-fiction.” | The Baffler
- “I find that you can’t really write about somebody unless you have listened to their side of the story.” Taffy Brodesser-Akner on how her background in journalism informed her novel-writing. | The New York Times
- “When Wong decided to go public with his criticism of Penguin … the literary community responded”: A recap of the copyright controversy over Penguin Classics’ new edition of John Okada’s 1957 novel No-No Boy. | International Examiner
- The story of the publishing house Faber & Faber, the “midwife at the birth of modernism”, is one of strategic management, literary luminaries, and at least two embarrassing misses (Ulysses and Animal Farm, anyone?). | The Guardian
- Marlon James, Ottessa Moshfegh, Karen Russell, Tana French and more recommend books to take to the beach this summer. | GQ
Also on Lit Hub: On The Literary Life, Kristen Arnett talks to Mitchell Kaplan about getting her start as a librarian • The anti-capitalist power of Jean de La Ville de Mirmont’s fiction • A close-reading of Ann Quin’s Berg, which you can read an excerpt of right here.
