TODAY: In 1984, French author, historian, critic, and philosopher Michel Foucault dies.
- Bradford Morrow on coming face to face with Edgar Allan Poe’s Tamerlane, the rarest book in American literature. | Lit Hub History
- “Can we—dare we?—imagine our way into the minds of historical subjects? And if we do, what will we find there?” Alizah Holstein considers the art of imagining in Alan Lightman’s Einstein’s Dreams. | Lit Hub Criticism
- You’ve heard of the “bad art friend,” but what about a good one? Rachel Zimmerman on an invaluable literary friendship cut short by cancer. | Lit Hub Craft
- “It’s always about to rain except / When it’s already raining, like now.” Read Frederick Seidel’s poem “1937.” | Lit Hub Poetry
- “I wanted her, wanted everything, and all of her was missing.” Tracy O’Neill on searching for her birth mother during a pandemic. | Lit Hub Memoir
-
Julia Phillips, Tracy O’Neill, reality TV, and more! These 20 new books are out today. | Lit Hub Reading Lists
Article continues after advertisement - Howard Markel on the debate that forever transformed our understanding of the natural world (and how Charles Darwin achieved 19th century rock star status). | Lit Hub History
- “As an action movie takes you out of an otherwise humdrum life, grief memoirs took me out of my own sadness…” How reading grief memoirs helped Cody Delistraty understand and process loss in new ways. | Lit Hub Craft
- “Mountains border the city on all sides. Their peaks slice open the clouds blown in from the Amazon and the Pacific, staining the city brown with rain.” Read from Santiago Jose Sanchez’s novel, Hombrecito. | Lit Hub Fiction
- How does censorship change language? On TikTok, algospeak, and the price of violating community guidelines. | The New Inquiry
- Gabriel Smith on the orthodontics cult of Mike Mew and being his patient: “‘Don’t worry,’ Mike said, to my mother, who was worrying.” | The Paris Review
- Tahitian poet Flora Aurima Devatine on poetry and theory, water and language. | Words Without Borders
- Kanya Kanchana traces the history of serpents in world literature and translation through lyric essay. | Asymptote
- Half a million books have been removed from the Internet Archive’s library following last year’s lawsuit against the organization. The Archive isn’t giving up. | Ars Technica
- Emily Gould looks into the hottest new trend in publishing: Monster smut. | The Cut
