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TODAY: In 1928, Belgian cartoonist Pierre Culliford, who worked under the pseudonym Peyo, best-known for the comic strip The Smurfs, is born.
- From two to… two million: how many copies did these famous books sell in their first year? | Lit Hub
- “Mathematics has historically been lacking in (and some would say outright hostile toward) women.” Catherine Chung on being—and writing—a woman who loves math. | Lit Hub
- “While there are cousins of Segal’s style and the breadth of her work, there are no peers, no echoes, no comparisons to be made.” Catherine Lacey on the searching spirit behind Lore Segal’s long career. | Lit Hub
- Jack Parlett examines the complex queer literary history of Fire Island, from Auden to O’Hara to “Overhearing Andy Cohen.” | Lit Hub
- The many ways we create the “other.” Louise Aronson on the contemporary othering of the elderly. | Lit Hub
- Meet the Bay Area butterflies fighting for survival in the face of development and drought. | Lit Hub
- Felicity McLean recommends 10 Australian gothic novels to make you shiver in the sunshine. | CrimeReads
- More News Tomorrow author Susan Shreve recommends five great novels about violence, from Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye to Philip Roth’s American Pastoral. | Book Marks
- How Read With Jenna, the monthly book club run by Today co-host Jenna Bush Hager, became “publishing’s most coveted seal of approval.” | Entertainment Weekly
- “It was true that the food was not very good.” Read a new short story by Emma Cline. | The New Yorker
- A University of Kansas scholar discovered a manuscript in the British Library that was handwritten by Thomas Hoccleve, one of the major Middle English poets of the 15th century. | KU Today
- “Amazon is the Wild West.” On the proliferation of fakes and counterfeits in Amazon’s online bookstore—and how they’ll only increase its domination. | The New York Times
- Mega-bestselling romance novelist Judith Krantz has died at the age of 91. | LA Times
- “The problem isn’t Twitter. It’s publishing’s lack of support for marginalized people and lack of care to invest in us AND in training themselves.” Is the culture of YA Twitter toxic, or necessary? | BuzzFeed News
- “These people not only hate women, but are afraid of them; scared of the capacity for women’s bodies to be unruly, unclean, unknowable.” On the resurgence of the “monstrous feminine.” | Granta
Also on Lit Hub: Literary Disco on the very best of Outside Magazine • Sadiqa de Meijer on how landscapes change as our language does • Massoud Hayoun on what it means to identify as both Jewish and Arab • Read from Helon Habila’s novel Travelers.
