TODAY: In 1898, Federico García Lorca is born.
- Letter from Los Angeles: Héctor Tobar reflects on a generational uprising, and witnessing history in the making. | Lit Hub
- Taking refuge from war in the woods: Wayétu Moore on surviving conflict as a child in Liberia. | Lit Hub
- “We want to live fully, whatever that can mean now.” On getting through coronavirus and staying sober. | Lit Hub
- “Her medical contributions weren’t just revolutionary, they were prescient, almost to an unsettling degree.” Remembering Florence Nightingale in the Year of the Nurse. | Lit Hub
- The point can wait: In praise of digression, both literary and culinary. | Lit Hub
- Jaquira Díaz, Mira Ptacin, Crystal Hana Kim, Iris Martin Cohen, and Michele Filgate discuss writing about being haunted, at the Red Ink Series. | Lit Hub
- Beyond bad apples: Molly Odintz on 11 crime novels that explore structural racism, institutional inequality, and tensions between police and communities. | CrimeReads
- Megha Majumdar’s A Burning, Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half, and Masha Gessen’s Surviving Autocracy all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. | Book Marks
- Move aside, Austen: Bath, England will be the site for the UK’s first museum devoted to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. | BBC
- “The books are there, they’ve always been there, yet the lists keep coming, bathing us in the pleasure of a recommendation. But that’s the thing about the reading. It has to be done.” What—and who—are all these anti-racist reading lists really for? | Vulture
- “No one is disputing any white writer’s right to dream up whatever material they desire—but, if they fail to do so convincingly, the public will hold them to account.” On sensitivity readers and the wrong way to write across difference. | The Walrus
- Palestinian authors are bringing new perspectives to migration, diaspora, and history. | Middle East Eye
- “More money, more technology, and more power and influence will not reduce the burden or increase the justness of policing.” Alex S. Vitale on the role of police in society. | The Paris Review
- How one mid-20th-century academic, Gerry Wilkes, gave Australian literature an international audience. | The Sydney Morning Herald
- “The next time you pick up a popular crime novel, flip to the acknowledgments page and see how quickly the author thanks the police…” John Fram on the complicity of white crime writers in police brutality. | The New York Times
Also on Lit Hub: Inside Hitler’s plan to rescue Mussolini from his failing regime • “Black Prayer”: A poem by James Noël, trans by. Nathan H. Dize • Read an excerpt from Adania Shibli’s novel Minor Detail, trans. by Elisabeth Jaquette.
