- Why James Baldwin traveled to the American south, and what it meant to him. | Lit Hub
- From queering the romantic comedy to living with the ghost of Gabriel García Márquez, our favorite stories of the month at Lit Hub. | Lit Hub
- “Some people only know feminist bookstoresfrom Portlandia.” An interview with Violet Valley bookstore. | Lit Hub
- Science time (because you’ve always wanted to know): What happens to whales when they die? | Lit Hub
- Comedian Hari Kondabolu: Racism was always therein New York, but 9/11 cracked it wide open. | Lit Hub
- On Stanley Cavell and the universal language of rom-com, from His Girl Friday to Set It Up. | Lit Hub
- Who are the women of true crime documentary phenomena The Staircase? After 13 episodes, we’re still not sure (and that’s a problem). | CrimeReads
- David Lynch, demi-gods, dead girls, and more: The best-reviewed books of the week. | Book Marks
- “I want to see what I am capable of doing, who I am capable of becoming.” Roxane Gay on working out, weight loss surgery, and living with a body in flux. | The Undefeated
- Legendary fantasy and science fiction writer Harlan Ellison has died at 84. | Vulture
- Let’s be very angry: Gillian Flynn and Megan Abbott in conversation. | Vanity Fair
- “She took her revenge in print. She kept the score, and all her paperwork to prove it.” Margaret Drabble on Muriel Spark at 100. | The Times Literary Supplement
- Critic Dwight Garner recently took his turn bookselling at The Open Book, a used bookstore in a remote Scottish town that rents out its upper floor apartment by the week and allows tenants to run the shop during their stay. | The New York Times
- When they finished burying me, what was left of me / sent up a demand like a hand blooming in the fresh dirt: A new poem by Saeed Jones. | Poets.org
- The Royal Society of Literature has inducted a diverse new class of fellows in an attempt to address its “overwhelmingly white, male, metropolitan and middle class” history. | The Guardian
