Lit Hub Daily: March 10, 2025

TODAY: In 1896, Nancy Cunard is born.

32 iconic villains await your judgement! Cast your vote to help your favorite advance in the second round of our bracket–you might help crown them the Best Villain in Literature. | Lit Hub
“I realized he was kin in telling this complicated, complex story that is Mississippi.” Jesmyn Ward on William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying. | Lit Hub Criticism
Henry Lien sings the praises of My Neighbor Totoro and Hayao Miyazaki’s radical depictions of childhood. | Lit Hub Film
On the banning of Eric Carle’s Draw Me A Star: “What those who redact Carle’s childlike art probably don’t realize is that it was inspired by his own response to censorship growing up in Nazi Germany.” | Lit Hub Criticism
Scott Spillman on the scholarship of the 19th-century historians who helped relativize the violent legacy of slavery. | Lit Hub History

Vanda Krefft explains how biographers who struggle to find primary sources can still recover a past believed to be lost. | Lit Hub Biography
“The more I read, the more plausible it seemed that football had some of the functions of a religion.” Oliver Smith on soccer and the legacy of the Hillsborough disaster. | Lit Hub Sports
Megan Volpert on how Alanis Morrisette gave a voice to her fans’s struggles. | Lit Hub Music
“You know, to be honest, most of what I remember about that weekend was the crowd. The people. Rush Creek packed.” Read from Callie Collins’ novel, Walk Softly on This Heart of Mine. | Lit Hub Fiction
“Gary resisted, celebrated, skewered, and suffered enormously.” Sam McKinniss on Gary Indiana. | The Paris Review
Jeremy Denk recommends books about the relationship between music and politics. | The New Yorker
Constance Grady on 100 years of (rereading) The Great Gatsby. | Vox
Peter Coviello on the state of academia: “The story of the decimation of higher education over the past decades is well-told, as is the inset story of the decimation of the humanities.” | n+1
“If fiction is the crafting of lies, why are writers always being asked about the truth?” Abubakar Adam Ibrahim on grief and writing. | The Dial
Dominic Amerena examines the enduring appeal of Greece and the destination novel. | Los Angeles Review of Books

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